Crocus sativus L.
Placement status: name or taxon excluded (unspecific) (Not established spice crop, cultivated in the Kozani area (village of Krokos!), but scarcely found outside fields.)
Synonymy
Content
Notes
Not established spice crop (saffron), cultivated in the Kozani area (village of Krokos!), but scarcely found outside fields. Evolutionary origin, parental species and allo- or autotriploidy of Crocus sativus has been a matter of discussion for almost a century. As recently demonstrated by Schmidt & al. (2019), C. sativus is an autotriploid hybrid derived from heterogeneous cytotypes of the Greek endemic C. cartwrightianus, hence a sterile triploid taxon propagated only as a clonal lineage by corms. It is the source of the most expensive spice of the world, produced from manually harvested stigmas, thus serving as a cash crop for rural communities.
