Fan Hong Hua

Fan Hong Hua (番红花), saffron, consists of the dried red stigmas of Crocus sativus L., a sterile autumn-flowering cormous perennial in the Iridaceae cultivated in Iran, Kashmir, Spain, and parts of western China. The plant produces a flat-topped corm 3–5 cm across that sends up a tuft of narrow grass-like leaves with a central pale stripe, alongside solitary cup-shaped flowers of intense lilac-purple with darker veins. Each flower bears three long deep-crimson stigmatic branches that are hand-collected at dawn and carefully dried to yield the costliest of culinary and medicinal spices. The dried threads are aromatic, yielding the orange-yellow pigment crocin and the bitter principle picrocrocin. Distinguished from Cao Hong Hua (Carthamus tinctorius safflower), which is unrelated.