An Ice Cream Social with the ‘Chocolate Botanist’

The chocolate botanist’s presentation was a flavorful mix of expert knowledge and humor accompanied by cups of tasty ice cream handed out to audience members before and after the lecture, along with a question-and-answer session. 

Haynes, who likes to say “cool beans” as a means of affirmation, shared perspectives about what he called vanilla’s “diverse culinary and cultural roles, globally.”

Haynes shared a quote from the famed botanist, George Washington Carver: “Anything will give up its secret, if you love it.” Haynes added, “Vanilla is delicious, but the education is also delicious.”

Before launching into his paean for all things vanilla, Haynes warned: “The biggest thing to keep in mind is any knowledge we have about a place will always be from the lens of colonialism. And colonialism has unfortunately disrupted, destroyed and discarded a lot of legitimately great information. Colonialism is a terrible thing, so I’m giving you what I can.”

During the question-and-answer portion of his lecture, Haynes explored what he explained as the perverse “unwritten rule” in parts of the American South that forbade Black people from eating vanilla ice cream, except for the Fourth of July.

Haynes – with a mass of dreadlocks crowning his head, flanked by a sturdy vanilla plant – offered up an hour-long, at once troubling and inspiring lecture that began with the history of the lucrative bean. Vanilla is the world’s second-most valuable spice behind saffron with annual revenues of $250 million.

Haynes noted that vanilla planifolia is a tropical plant and a member of the orchid family with over 100 species. Its name origins are from the Spanish word, “vania,” which means “sheath,” or “pod.”

The perennial plant – native to Mexico and Belize – is pollinated by the orchid bee. It takes at least three years to become fully mature and nine more months before it starts producing its beans.

Described as Mexico’s gift to the world, the Totonacs of Veracruz, Mexico are credited as its first cultivators.

“The Totanacs revered the vanilla plant,” said Haynes, who added that indigenous people held vanilla festivals “that predated the Spanish conquests” and continue today.

“Women perfumed their hair with vanilla,” Haynes said. “The Aztecs used it to flavor a cacao beverage” known as xocolati, which enthralled the Spanish explorer, Hernan Cortez, who introduced vanilla to Europe.

The troubling aspects of the vanilla plant are what Haynes described as the “historical nuances surrounding Black communities and their relationship with vanilla.” 

Haynes noted that the vanilla plant arrived in Madagascar in the 1800s. Now the world’s biggest exporter of vanilla, farmers in Madagascar who harvest the crop are beset by food insecurity and limited access to electricity.

Then there’s the tragic story of Edmond Albius, born into slavery in 1829 in Madagascar. Albius was only 12 when he taught his white botanist enslaver how to pollinate vanilla by hand because the primary pollinator of the plant, the orchid bee in Central America, was not native to Madagascar.

“Today, virtually all vanilla pollination is by hand,” Haynes said. 

 Albius was never credited for his ingenuity and died in 1880 at the age of 51 after a life of working odd jobs and a brief imprisonment, “without a pension or true appreciation” for his discovery, Haynes said. “This was the 1800s. Nobody would believe that a Black person was able to do this thing that the White, well-learned people of the time could not do.”