Crocuses are among the first flowers of spring, pushing through the snow as early as late February. Their autumn relative, the saffron crocus, has been the world's most expensive spice for thousands of years. Here are the legends of the crocus — from Greek myths to Roman excess — with myth separated from fact, plus how to tell a spring crocus from saffron and the poisonous autumn crocus (colchicum).
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Crocus and saffron belong to the same genus, Crocus, in the iris family, with about 100 species. But in everyday language the words mean different things:
The names are ancient: Greek krokos meant saffron, while "saffron" comes from the Arabic za'farān, linked to the colour yellow.
Saffron is one of the oldest cultivated spices. Frescoes at Akrotiri on Santorini (around the 17th century BC) show girls gathering saffron. It appears in Egyptian papyri, the Song of Songs and the writings of Hippocrates. Saffron dyed fabrics, flavoured wine and incense and was used in cosmetics and rituals. In Buddhist tradition, the yellow-orange of monks' robes is called "saffron", although cheaper dyes were usually used in practice.
Saffron growing in Europe began under Arab rule in Spain in the 10th century; later Italy, France and England became centres (the town of Saffron Walden is named after its saffron fields). Ornamental spring crocuses reached Western European gardens in the 16th century from the Ottoman Empire, spread in part by the botanist Carolus Clusius.
The best-known story is told by Ovid in the Metamorphoses: the youth Crocus fell in love with the nymph Smilax, but their love was ill-fated, and the gods turned him into a saffron flower and her into the climbing smilax. In another version, Crocus was a friend of Hermes and was killed by the god's discus by accident — much like Hyacinthus and Apollo. Flowers with bright red stigmas grew from drops of his blood.
In the Iliad, Homer describes how on the summit of Mount Ida the earth beneath Zeus and Hera sprang up with fresh grass, lotus, crocus and hyacinth. The crocus was thereafter seen as a flower of love and the marriage bed. Read about these flowers in our articles on the lotus flower and the language of flowers.
In myth, saffron garments were worn by the chosen few: Eos, the dawn goddess, is "saffron-robed" in Homer, and Dionysus and his followers wore saffron too; Jason cast off a saffron cloak before his trial in Colchis. Yellow-orange signalled luxury and divinity.
In Rome, saffron was strewn on banquet floors and theatre stages and added to perfumes and baths. Emperor Elagabalus became especially notorious: according to the Historia Augusta, he bathed in saffron-scented pools and covered couches with saffron. Historians consider many such stories exaggerated, but they show how precious the spice was.
A popular modern Valentine's Day story says that the last note "from your Valentine" contained a yellow crocus that restored the jailer's daughter's sight. It's a late folk tale with no historical sources, but it made the crocus one of the symbols of the lovers' holiday.
Wild crocuses grow in Ukraine. The best known is Heuffel's crocus (Crocus heuffelianus), which carpets the mountain meadows of the Carpathians in lilac every spring, drawing visitors to see it. The species is listed in the Red Data Book of Ukraine, so picking or digging up wild crocuses is prohibited — enjoy them in place and buy bulbs for your garden from nurseries.
No. The spice comes only from the stigmas of the saffron crocus, which flowers in autumn.
A crocus has three stamens, colchicum six. Colchicum is poisonous.
The stigmas are picked by hand, each flower has only three, and a kilogram of spice needs about 150,000 flowers.
Author: Maria Svitlovir
Graduated from Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Institute of Biology and Medicine (2001). BSc in Biology, MSc in Horticulture. Writes about plants, works at a garden centre selecting and repotting plants, and contributes to plant reference guides.
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