Another look at your spice cabinet

I visited a spice plantation in south India and learned some awesome facts. Here are the top 5:

5. Huge purple flowers hang from on-the-vine bananas.

4. Nutmeg is made from grinding single large seeds from bulbous pear-like fruits.

3. Vanilla beans sprout from orchids that must be painstakingly pollinated by hand (only in Madagascar do birds have beaks long enough to pollinate orchids without human intervention).

2. Peppercorns grow in dangling bunches on bushes. Who knew?

1. Cloves are actually tree buds. OMG. They’re plucked young and then dried in the sun.

Cloves—still on the tree!

Tree frog chilling in a nutmeg tree.

Vanilla bean plant. The long green tubules are baby beans. 

By-hand pollination of a vanilla orchid. 

Flower hanging from a banana plant. 

Bird in the spice garden. 

Field of thick coriander stalks.

Grind the overgrown seed in this fruit, and you'll get nutmeg.

Dangling peppercorns.