Saffron

Saffron, the world’s most expensive spice, is extracted from the flowers of the saffron crocus, Crocus sativus. It has been used for over 50,000 years. Saffron was a precious commodity treasured across ancient civilizations for medicine, dye, perfume, and rituals. It was cultivated and traded extensively.

Saffron was a prized luxury item in ancient Rome, symbolizing high status and extreme wealth. Romans sprinkled saffron essences and scattered saffron threads in public spaces, royal halls, theaters, and banquet rooms to deodorize and perfume the air. When Emperor Nero entered Rome for a triump in 67 AD, citizens famously spread saffron along the streets for him. It wasn't a bloody military victory, Nero was celebrating his 1,808 first-place prizes in music, poetry, and chariot racing.

According to the Roman historian Suetonius, Nero rode in the historical triumphal chariot used by Augustus. He wore a purple robe covered in gold stars and held his musical crowns proudly in his hands. The procession traveled through the Circus Maximus, the Velabrum, and the Forum up to the Temple of Apollo on the Palatine. As he passed, citizens and attendants showered him with birds, ribbons, sweets, and the very expensive saffron. The spectacle alienated the Roman aristocracy and military commanders and accelerated unrest that forced Nero's death months later in June 68 AD.

The first known use by humans of wild crocuses was as pigment for cave paintings, about 50,000 years ago in today’s Iraq. Ancient texts from Sumer, Assyria, and Babylonia also describe the use of wild crocuses in medicine and dye. Ancient artworks and genetics point to Bronze Age Greece, in 1700 BCE or earlier, as the origin of saffron’s domestication. Domesticated saffron can only be propagated asexually with human help. The process was first described by the Greek philosopher Theophrastus in the fourth century BCE. Today, domesticated saffron is grown for use in cooking and perfumes and as a yellow dye. 16000 flowers, requiring up to 470 person-hours to collect, yield a single kilo, worth between $1,300 and $10,000.

Dense patches of crocus flowers on the fresco ‘The Saffron Gatherers’ from the island of Santorini (1600 BCE) suggest cultivation.

Around the globe today, all saffron crocuses are effectively clones dating back to saffron’s emergence in ancient times.