Orchids can eat one meh?

Of course can one lah!!!

Vanilla flavouring comes from an orchid – NOT A LEGUMINOUS PLANT HOR!!!

In the past all vanilla pods come from just one species – Vanilla planifolia, but now, farmers are making hybrids of vanilla for the pods, giving each a unique flavour and producing hardier plants at the same time.

Vanilla pilifera pods can be eaten and they were said to be rather sweet.

By the way, vanilla products are the only orchid plant parts that are CITES exempted (ALL ORCHIDS are in the same league as the rhino – don’t ask me why: but conservationists don’t seem to realize that unlike orchids, rhinos can’t be tissue-cultured and grown in a small balcony).

Ever felt like bashing the Turkish ice-cream seller for musing you with that cone and make you so darn irritated because you have to toy along for that sweet sticky delight? That sticky stuff is salep – made from the tubers of terrestrial orchids (Orchis maculata and other Orchis spp.) If you read Eric Hansen’s “Orchid Fever”, he paints a beautiful image of how it’s harvested to how it’s made. Go try it. Just play along with the Turkish ice-cream seller – personally, it’s an odd ritual, the culture requires some getting used to.

In the Andes (can’t remember which portion) there is this species of Cyrtopodium used to curdle milk to make cheese. Can’t recall where I read this – me think it’s either from the AOS mag or Orchid Digest.