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It has perfumed the palaces of ancient Crete , emblazon the robes of Tibetan monks , and softened the baths of Alexander the Great . It ’s the nub of legends , yet its own tale is fairly simple : orange yellow is nothing more than the dried stigmas of a crocus flower . And it ’s not exclusive to exotic Persian soils — there ’s a good luck that it would flourish in your garden .
Three red stain on a Crocus sativus . Photo by : Line1 ( Wikipedia ) .
Harvesting saffron is long-winded and laborious , hence a price that rivals Au . Each orange yellow crocus ( Crocus sativus ) yield three shining ruby-red stigma , which are hand take in a fugitive fall harvest — flush must be pick the Clarence Shepard Day Jr. they bloom , then apace dissected .
The extracted stigmas — once plucked , these strands are called orange yellow threads — are spread to dry , weighed and box . Formerly the generative pipe organ of a small crocus , the saffron crocus train of thought are now sold as a precious commodity .
A Kashmiri farmer in a Crocus sativus field in Pampore , India . Photo by : hindustanitimes.com .
One pound of Crocus sativus costs $ 1,000 , and requires the stigmas from almost 75,000 flowers . Fortunately , it ’s virile — a Irish pound of saffron will flavour a lot of paella .
When at the market , mind prices that seem too in effect to be true . Other ingredient , like safflower or crocus fashion , are sometimes added to the pure saffron stigmas . This is n’t new — saffron crocus has been thin out for as long as it has been coveted ; in the Middle Ages , unscrupulous saffron merchants were even burned alive .
Saffron at a spice store in the former city of Nablus , West Bank . These dried red stigmas of Crocus sativus can be crushed or used as train of thought . Photo by : Flickr user Guillaume Paumier .
Today , saffron is cultivated mainly in east Asia and parts of the Mediterranean ( Iran produces 90 % of the Earth ’s saffron , and the EU has made effort to win over Afghanistani farmers to replace opium crop withCrocus sativus ) . But , according to agriculturalist , the orange yellow crocus is middling adaptable — it will bloom in many climates with wet springs and spicy dry summer , including Britain and the United States ( a Pennsylvania gardener talks about her achiever growingCrocus sativushere ) .
