From Bloom to Bottle: How Iran's Purple Flower Fields Produce Saffron, the World's Most Expensive Spice

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BY Kirstin Fawcett, Mental Floss

Before it’s bottled and sold in Western grocery stores, saffron—the world’s most expensive spice—begins its life cycle in the Middle East as a delicate purple flower. The sweetly floral substance is derived from the crocus flower’s dried stamen, but harvesting these pollen-producing parts is neither easy, nor cheap, for farmers: It takes them 40 hours to hand-pick enough stamens to produce a single pound of saffron, and a football field’s worth of flowers to boot. For this reason, pound for pound, saffron is more expensive than gold.
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National Geographic’s video below takes us to the crocus fields of Iran, where nearly 90 percent of the world’s saffron supply is produced.