I have learnt more about vanilla than someone whose ass isn't ever going to grow it needs to. Fun tidbits:
.It's expensive as shit
.It has to be hand-pollinated for commercial purposes
.Fake vanilla can come from beaver batty
.We can grow it locally
.It has grades, like meat does

Beaver batty "vanilla" isn't vanilla, but a similar-scented substance from (close to) the animal's anal glands. It goes in foods, too.
Fake vanilla/"vanilla" extracts can also come from non-orchid sources, such as wood

But the best thing I learnt, helping #decolonisefood is that french vanilla does not fucking exist.
Vanilla is not grown in France.
Like much of the co-opted foods of the world, vanilla came from WINKA LatAm (incl the Caribbean).
The other best thing is vanilla's etymology

Vanilla and vagina are cognates
Vagina and vanilla come from the latin "vagina", meaning "sheath, covering (i.e. something that covers)".
Vanilla really means little vagina (little sheath :))

Looking at the flat-leave vanilla orchid and imagining a vagina, we can understand.

Lat. vagina -> Span vaina -> vainilla (illa being the Spanish diminutive).

Anywho, we thank the Totonac from WINKA Mexico for tlīlxōchitl (black ink flower)/vanilla & for drinking it with hot xocolatl, & we thank Edmond Albius, the slave whose genius gave vanilla its varieties

Imagine a whole professor of fucking botany couldn't do what the Edmond, a slave, did. It vexing, it makes you think of the brilliance (and peace and prosperity) stifled then (and now) and of how much further we could have been as a species were it not for those savages