Crocus

"Like lilac flame its colour glows,
Tender and yet so clearly bright..."

Mary Bothan Howitt

The crocus is the first spring flower to bloom out of the bare, cold earth. The eighty species of crocus belong to the Iridaceae family, same as the iris. They are native to south-central Europe and Asia, and the name crocus comes from the Greek word for saffron: krokos. When the Crusaders returned from the Holy Land, they introduced saffron to the court of Henry I. By the time of Henry VIII, they were dying bed sheets with saffron to make them antiseptic. It was wildly expensive even then, and using saffron to color linen was eventually banned in England. Saffron has always been coveted, and a town called Saffron Walden in Essex produced good quality saffron up until the 1700's.

Saffron was used as medicine and flavoring for thousands of years. Homer made a reference to the crocus in 700 BC, and the Hebrew Song of Solomon mentions them in the Bible. On Crete at the ancient Minos palace, a fresco called The Blue Boy Picking Crocus is over 4,000 years old:

4400 flower stigmata are needed to make just one ounce of saffron. This little jar from Costco weighs 5 grams, which is about 1/5 of an ounce. So according to my sloppy math, are there about 880 stigmata in there?