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Clearly there is something magical about the Crocus sativus flower, from which the spice saffron is derived. If its striking beauty does not immediately cast a spell on its beholder, often it simply takes experiencing the spice to fall into full enchantment with it. While saffron is exceptionally expensive, because it takes approximately 150 flowers to yield just 1,000 mg (0.035 oz) of dry saffron threads, and costs approximately $1,000 a pound, it does not take much to have an effect. Its uniqueness is also illustrated by the fact that it shuns mechanization, requiring of its would-be possessors that it be painstakingly harvested by hand , as no doubt has been done for tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of years. Because each Crocus sativus flower bears no more than four flowers, each with three vivid crimson stigmas from which the spice is derived, at most only 12 stigma are produced by each, which yields the equivalent of 30 mg (0.011 oz) of fresh saffron or 7 mg (0.00025 oz) dried.
Saffron has been documented to have been used as a versatile medicine since ancient times. In 2004 researchers studying 3,500 year old frescoes at Thera, a Greek island in the Aegean, found depictions of a goddess presiding over the manufacturer and use of a drug from the saffron flower. [i]Ancient Saffron: Magical Healing Powers Confirmed by Science
Vtech