Saffron
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Saffron. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
in botany, the Crocus sativus, a species with light purple flowers which come out in autumn. It grows in the S. of Europe and in parts of Asia. It is extensively cultivated in France, Austria and Spain, as it formerly was in England. The Spanish variety is the best for commercial purposes, though it is said that 100,000 flowers are necessary to produce one pound of saffron. The stigmas of the flower are from 1 to 1/2 inches in length, narrow and rounded where they are attached to the style, but spreading and club-shaped near the extremity, which is truncated. They have an orange or brownish-red color, yellow in the narrower par part, and an agreeable aromatic odor. The dried stigmas of the saffron crocus are sometimes used in dyeing and for coloring tinctures. They have a bitter taste, and impart a yellow color to water, alcohol, and oils. It was formerly met with in two forms, viz., hay saffron and cake saffron, but the former is now alone in demand. Saffron is slightly stimulant. It is used in the treatment of exanthemata, but chiefly as a coloring agent in preparing medicines and in cookery. The natives in India use saffron as a remedy in fever, melancholia, catarrhal affections of children, and as a coloring matter in some dishes.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
a bulbous plant of the crocus family. It has long grass-like leaves, and flowers that spring from short scapes like those of the crocus. The flower is purple; the style divides into three orange-colored stigmas an inch or so in length. These stigmas hold the yellow dye known commercially as saffron. They are picked in the early morning and dried in a kiln. The stigmas of over 1,000 flowers are required to yield an ounce of the dye. The saffron is a native of the Levant. It was cultivated by the Arabs in Spain during the tenth century; and during the fifteenth century was raised in quantities in England for the use of dyers. The ancient Greeks considered saffron a royal color. In addition to its use as a dye, saffron is also employed in medicine. The English and Cornish cooks use saffron to flavor a certain sort of bread. A "saffron" complexion denotes a yellow, sallow hue. Saffron is produced for sale in Spain, Asia Minor , Persia, Cashmere, and China. See Dye
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Both accounts place the industry in Europe and the Near East, with Collier's in 1921 naming Spain as the source of the best commercial grade; today Iran grows roughly 90 percent of the world crop, mostly in Khorasan, while Spain is largely a trader and repacker of saffron grown elsewhere. The dye trade Aiton's described in 1910 has essentially gone, killed by cheap synthetic colourants, and saffron survives as a culinary spice — the most expensive in the world by weight — rather than as a dyestuff or a drug for "exanthemata" and fever. Botanically, the plant is now understood as a sterile triploid that sets no seed and is propagated only by dividing its corms (not a "bulbous plant"), a single clone almost certainly domesticated from the wild Crocus cartwrightianus of the Aegean. One old use has had an odd afterlife: Collier's note that Indian practitioners gave saffron for melancholia anticipates modern clinical trials of saffron extract as a mild antidepressant.
Written for this edition, 2026.