A Lone Crocus

    This seems to have been a good spring for Croci, because they keep popping up in the yard.  I came across this striped beauty yesterday.

    Whenever I see a crocus I think about Saffron, by weight, the world’s most expensive spice, which comes from croci.   Saffron doesn’t come from the species of croci that I have in my yard.  The Saffron Crocus has a red thread-like stigma that fertilizes the flower and it is that tiny stigma that is picked to get saffron.

    It is a very labor intensive job to pick the tiny stigma for saffron.  To get 1 kg (2.2 pounds) of saffron, 440,000 flowers have to be hand-picked.  It takes 40 hours to pick 150,000 flowers, so you can understand why saffron is so expensive.  A kilogram of saffron costs about $5,000.

    Needless to say, I have never tasted saffron and probably never will, but I do enjoy seeing the croci in the yard.

You can see my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca