Saffron

Saffron is the dried stigmas of the saffron crocus, a small perennial of the iris family that grows from a corm to between ten and thirty centimetres and flowers purple in autumn, each bloom bearing three red or orange stigmas. Being a sterile triploid, it is unknown in the wild and survives only because growers divide and replant its corms; botanists think it was bred from a wild crocus of southern mainland Greece. People have grown it and traded the spice for more than 3,500 years, and tens of thousands of flowers go into a single pound, which keeps it costly. Grieve identifies it with the Karcom of the Song of Solomon, notes that it was once grown widely round Saffron Walden in Essex, and records how highly the East prized its yellow dye; Northcote repeats Hakluyt's tale of a pilgrim who smuggled a corm into England inside his hollowed staff. Kynes tells of Phoenician moon-shaped cakes for Astarte, Egyptians burning it for Thoth, medieval German magicians burning it to call up spirits, and Moroccan amulets against jinn. Cunningham gives it to the Sun and fire, for love, lust, healing, strength and psychic powers: it goes into love sachets, its infusion washes the hands before healing rites and, drunk, is said to show the future, and the ancient Persians used it to raise the wind.