Saffron

Anatolian-Iranian, herbaceous, bulbous, biennial or perennial, 20-30 cm tall, bulbous leaves, reddish-lilac flowers. It is a medicinal-spice plant cultivated for thousands of years. Many varieties are cultivated in Southern Europe, Western Asia and North Africa. Propagated by onion. Good yield for 3-5 years. Each flower has a 3-parted stigma (tepal) and these are collected at the beginning of the inflorescence, sometimes together with the stigma, and dried. (Usually, all the flowers are collected, then the stigmas are separated by hand.) 1 kg of dry saffron is obtained from 6 kg of 100.000 – 140.000 flowers from 1 hectare. 1 kg of spice contains about 500,000 stigmas. Because of this low yield, saffron has always been the most expensive spice.