Plant
Saffron
Crocus sativus
Also known as: Crocus sativus
An autumn-flowering crocus in the iris family (Iridaceae) — the world's most expensive spice by weight, derived from the dried red stigmas of the flower. The species is triploid and sterile; every saffron crocus in cultivation is propagated vegetatively from corms — meaning every saffron plant on Earth is a clonal descendant of a single original Bronze Age selection in Greece or western Asia. It takes roughly 150 flowers (450 stigmas, hand-picked at dawn) to produce one gram of dried saffron — the labor-intensity behind the spice's legendary price.
Scientific
Crocus sativus (family Iridaceae) is a triploid sterile cultigen — its three chromosome sets prevent normal meiosis and seed formation. The species was almost certainly derived from the wild Greek Crocus cartwrightianus through human selection in Bronze Age Crete or the Aegean.
Each flower produces three crimson stigmas — the saffron-yielding part. These are harvested by hand at dawn (the flowers wilt quickly in sun) and then dried. The active compounds — crocin (the yellow pigment), picrocrocin (the bitter), and safranal (the aromatic) — develop during the drying process.
Cultural and historical
Saffron crocus depictions in Minoan frescoes from Akrotiri (Santorini) — 3,500+ years old — are among the earliest visual records of any cultivated plant. Greek, Persian, Roman, and medieval Mediterranean cooking used saffron extensively. Spanish paella, Italian risotto alla milanese, Iranian rice dishes (tahdig, zereshk polo), Indian biryani, and Swedish lussekatter all depend on saffron’s color and aromatic.
The labor-intensity is the species’ defining economic feature: an acre produces only ~1 kg of saffron per year. Spanish and Iranian saffron typically retails at $5,000–$15,000 per kilogram — the most expensive spice by weight in commercial trade.
Global production
Top producers: Iran (~90% of global supply), India (Kashmir), Spain, Greece, Morocco, Afghanistan.
See also
Auto-generated from this entry’s typed relations: frontmatter, grouped by relation type so the editorial signal isn’t flattened.
- Shares approach with: [[walnut]] · [[vanilla]] · [[turmeric]] · [[spinach]] · [[rose]]
- Member of: [[plants]] · [[persian-culinary-iconography]]
- Cousin of: [[crocus]]
Sources
- Wikipedia — Saffron
- Pat Willard, Secrets of Saffron (2002)
A plant entry in the 0mn1.one [[directory]].
What links here, and how
Inbound connections from across the wiki, grouped by lens and by relationship. These appear automatically — every entity page declares what it links to, and that data populates here on the targets.
Scientific
cousin of
- Crocus auto-linked from body mention
Cultural
shares approach with
- Cardamom auto-linked from body mention
- Gardenia auto-linked from body mention
- Gladiolus auto-linked from body mention
- Pomegranate Persian-cultural kin — saffron, pomegranate, and rose together form the iconic flavor and color triad of Persian cuisine and poetry.
counterpart to
- Vanilla World's two most-expensive spices by weight — saffron #1, vanilla #2; both are labor-intensive flowering plants where each unit requires hand-harvesting of fragile floral parts. Different cultural traditions, parallel commercial structure.
10 inbound links · 8 outbound