Saffron is made from the tiny red stigmas of crocus flowers, picked by hand. About how many flowers are needed to make one kilogram of dried saffron?
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Answer
About 150,000 flowers
Each crocus offers just three stigmas, and the flowers must be picked in the early morning during a harvest that lasts only a couple of weeks a year.
How to estimate it
Work from the weight of the spice. A crocus flower yields 3 stigmas, and each dried stigma is a wisp weighing about 2 milligrams, so one flower gives about 6 mg of saffron. A kilogram is 1,000,000 mg. 1,000,000 / 6 is about 167,000 flowers. Growers' figures vary with the harvest, and the usual estimate is about 150,000 flowers per kilogram.
Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica; FAO
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