Saffron Doesn’t Grow on Trees, Saffron is a spice known throughout the world, and history, for its unique flavor, color, and aroma. It is the world’s most precious spice and with very good reason.
Each Saffron filament is one red stigma from the flower of the Crocus Sativa plant, and there are only 3 stigmas per flower. Saffron Doesn’t Grow on Trees
These flowers must first be hand-picked, as a machine would badly damage the stigmas, and then the extremely delicate stigmas must be carefully pinched off by hand, taking care not to break them.
You would need to repeat this process for over 75,500 Crocus Sativa flowers to get only 1 pound of saffron. Saffron Doesn’t Grow on Trees.
So even though the properties of this exotic spice certainly help to make saffron a precious commodity, it is the painstaking and labor-intensive gathering process that makes this spice so rare and valuable.