SPICE HUNTERS
ometimes referred to as “red gold,” saffron is the world’s most expensive spice. For thousands of years, it has been highly prized by many, or saffron crocus, which only reproduces with human intervention. It can take as many as 8,000 flowers, which must be harvested by hand, to produce a single pound of saffron. The earliest evidence of people using wild crocus comes from saffron-derived pigments found in 50,000-year-old cave paintings in Iraq, but experts have debated when and where the plant was first domesticated.
