Flavors of Morocco: Saffron – Plant Converse
Inside The New York Botanical Yard
Posted in Exhibitions on January 28 2020, by Matt Newman
Crocus sativus
Saffron has been prized by civilizations for millennia. Historic Egyptians used saffron to make perfume, and 4,000-year-old frescoes throughout the Greek islands of Santorini and Crete depict people plucking flowers from cultivated saffron fields. Each Crocus sativus flower produces a three-pronged, golden-colored pistil (the female reproductive part of a flower), which is the provision of the spice. It is the most costly spice on this planet on account of its labor-intensive manufacturing and actually low yield: one pound of dried saffron requires larger than 50,000 crocus flowers.
This is just one of many herbs and spices featured in our new Exhibit Lab, Flavors of Morocco, highlighting this North African cultural crossroads, its culinary traditions, and the vegetation that assist them—reflecting the combination of cultures which have intermingled in Morocco all by historic previous. See it proper right here in our Ross Gallery by the use of March 15.
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Inside The New York Botanical Yard Posted in Exhibitions on January 28 2020, by Matt Newman Crocus sativus Saffron has been prized by civilizations for millennia. Historic Egyptians used saffron to make perfume, and 4,000–year-old frescoes throughout the Greek islands of Santorini and Crete depict people plucking flowers from cultivated…