Prem, every seed is wind dispersed... in a hurricane. Why are Vanilla seeds so massive? Are they bigger/heavier than reed-stem Epidendrum seeds? I'm curious because reed-stem seeds have enough nutrients to germinate without the help of a fungal partner, so if Vanilla seeds are even heavier, it stands to reason that they might also be able to germinate on their own.
Orchid Whisperer, what, exactly, do you mean by "confinement"? Maybe I missed it, but I don't think the article I shared mentioned anything about growing Vanillas in greenhouses. The article did mention
intercropping...
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"Co-cropping" the vanilla with avocado, citrus or nut trees on existing farms would mean getting more use out of the same piece of land, a win-win for growers and the environment.
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The article also mentioned shadehouses...
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Another option for growing vanilla in Florida is monoculture in shade houses. The simple and relatively inexpensive structures can sustain the right conditions for plants to thrive and enable more intensive production.
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Intercropping and shadehouses would both potentially permit cross-pollination between cultivated and wild Vanillas.
Logically the farmers would want to select for varieties of Vanilla that were naturally pollinated, thus eliminating the high cost of artificial pollination.
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To this day, vanilla production depends on sources of cheap labor to carry out pollination, and so the identification of its natural pollinators is of potential economic significance. - Pesach Lubinsky et al, Pollination of Vanilla and evolution in Orchidaceae
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