Mayan origins of Tahitian Vanilla
A nice example of 19th century trade in Polynesia:
The origin of the Tahitian vanilla orchid, whose cured fruit is the source of the rare and highly esteemed gourmet French Polynesian spice, has long eluded botanists. Known by the scientific name Vanilla tahitensis, Tahitian vanilla is found to exist only in cultivation; natural, wild populations of the orchid have never been encountered.
Now, a team of investigators led by Pesach Lubinsky, a postdoctoral researcher with Norman Ellstrand, a professor of genetics in UC Riverside’s Department of Botany and Plant Sciences, claims to have traced Tahitian vanilla back to its true origins….
Posted on
August 30th, 2008 by
Simon Greenhill
2 Responses to “Mayan origins of Tahitian Vanilla”
Leave a Reply
Categories
- africa
- americas
- anthropology
- art
- austronesian
- bacteria
- bees
- birds
- bongo-bongoism
- books
- chimpanzees
- conferences
- creationism-is-stupid
- cultural evolution
- culture
- dinosaurs
- disease
- europe
- evolution
- Evolutionary Psychology
- fossils
- genetics
- henry
- horizontal gene transfer
- human prehistory
- humor
- it-was-better-in-my-day
- language
- language preservation
- linguistics
- literature
- microsatellites
- misc
- mtDNA
- music
- neanderthals
- neuroscience
- new-caledonian-crows
- non-human
- ook!
- orangutans
- papers-I-should-read
- people
- phylogenetics
- polynesia
- primates
- psychology
- punctuated equilibrium
- quotes
- religion
- science
- self-improvement
- sexual selection
- six-degrees
- software
- SSTA
- stupidity
- tool-use
- Tree Tuesday
- Uncategorized
- websites
- wednesday-wiki
- Y chromosome
Related Sites
- Anthropology.net
- bayblab
- Computational Biology and Evolution
- Culture evolves!
- Dechronization
- Expelled
- Genomicron
- iPhylo
- John Hawks
- language.psy.auckland.ac.nz
- Of Two Minds
- Primatology.net
- Quentin Atkinson
- simon.net.nz

October 3rd, 2008 at 12:00 am
Here’s another phony South Seas story: Gardenia taitensis (Sampaguita - the national flower of the Philippines, is not native to Tahiti or even much grown there
See:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/flowerfreak/2896511401/
October 3rd, 2008 at 12:01 am
Here’s another phony South Seas story: Gardenia taitensis (Sampaguita - the national flower of the Philippines, is not native to Tahiti or even much grown there)
See:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/flowerfreak/2896511401/