The crop
A flower that cannot reseed itself.
Crocus sativus is copied by hand from corms. That is why a bad week in October can erase a harvest, and why a few dried stigmas were worth carrying across a medieval road.
The flower8 minFrom a sterile flower to a caravan goodCrocus sativus does not give you a seed crop to fall back on. People have been moving its corms, and its dried stigmas, for a very long time.
What this desk will claim
Botany that is settled, and trade geography a cook can use. Bronze Age paintings on Thera show crocus gatherers. Iran grows most of the modern crop. La Mancha, Pampore, and Herat are real places that still show up on labels. Queens in saffron baths can stay in the legend pile.
The modern chapter we actually checked
The shop links to Afghan saffron sold by Burlap & Barrel, who name Herat, and by Rumi Spice, who sell Afghan threads. That is a living origin, not a manuscript. The older map is here so the jar has a lineage.