Saffron Crocus

[Tamara]

Anybody got any Saffron Crocus?
There are very large farms of it around here but they are all done through franchise...
Love Tamara

[Tas']

These guys sell them, but they're not available at the moment:

http://www.gardenexpress.com.au/

[macthedog]

Hi Tamara,

Peter & Sue Huber have a great saffron crocus place in Wilmot Tasmania. Their website says that they are sold out for this year though.
http://www.users.bigpond.com/boobookhill/

Bernie

[ejanea]

I bought my saffron crocus from Diggers a couple of years ago.
The first year I picked enough to find out that it is heaps better than the bought stuff. This year wasn't very good, but here we had a really hard year for a lot of the garden. They didn't flower.
I'm looking after them carefully with hopes of flowers and more stamens next year. They are definitely worth the effort.

[ho-hum]

whoo hoo ejanea.

A crop well worth trying and from everything I have read about crocus and its specific requirement. THOSE GUYS ARE KIDDING THEMSELVES. You are on the cusp of meeting that plants requirements..Please read up on them.


I hope you make a fortune..

well done..


floot

[Michaelangelica]

Saffron may stop vision loss
Monday, 18 May 2009
ARC Centre of Excellence in Vision Science

A bowl containing my year's salary in saffron


The herb saffron may hold one of the keys to preventing the loss of sight in old age – and may even help to improve vision in people suffering certain blinding eye diseases.

Research by Professor Silvia Bisti of the ARC Centre of Excellence in Vision Science (The Vision Centre) and University of L’Aquila, Italy, has established that saffron has remarkable effects on the genes which regulate the performance of the eye’s key vision cells.

Her research has shown that the high-priced golden culinary herb made from crocus flowers not only protects the vision cells (photoreceptors) from damage, it may also acts to slow and possibly even reverse the course of blinding diseases such as age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and retinitis pigmentosa.

A clinical trial with patients suffering AMD in Rome has found early indications that treatment with a dietary supplement of saffron may cause damaged eye cells to recover.

“Saffron is not simply an anti-oxidant. It seems to possess a number of other properties which are protective to vision,” Prof Bisti, who is currently visiting colleagues in The Vision Centre in Australia, says.

“For example it appears to affect genes which regulate the fatty acid content of the cell membrane, and this makes the vision cells tougher and more resilient.

“Secondly we have shown in animal models that a saffron diet will protect the eye from the damaging effects of bright light – something we all suffer whenever we go out in the sun.”

Prof. Bisti says a third line of research has found that saffron is active in affecting genetic diseases of the eye, such as retinitis pigmentosa, which can cause life-long blindness in young people. Animal research here too offers the prospect of slowing down the progression of sight loss.

And fourthly, saffron given to human patients suffering from age-related macular degeneration, which causes partial or total loss of sight to many people in old age, has shown signs of cell recovery.

“We are excited by these early findings. We will know more when all the results are in later this year,” Prof. Bisti says. The saffron diet treatment may also be trialled as part of a wider experiment involving ways to prevent vision loss in humans in Sydney and Rome later this year.

Prof. Bisti said she began to study the effects on saffron at L’Aquila, in Italy’s mountainous Abruzzi country because it was a widely-grown local crop. It was already well-known as an anti-oxidant, but no-one had explored its effects on eyesight before.

“The point about saffron is that it is completely safe and harmless. It has been used in cooking and medicine for three thousand years.”

Prof. Bisti’s team are also working to isolate the active components of saffron which produce the various beneficial effects on vision with the goal of developing therapies based on them.

Prof. Bisti’s laboratory at L’Aquila University was severely damaged in the recent earthquake in Italy and her experiments disrupted. In view of the tragedy and the importance of her work, The Vision Centre has agreed to support one of her key researchers to come to Australia and work at the Australian National University for a year, Centre director Professor Trevor Lamb has announced. Another of her research staff will be working at the University of Sydney, enabling this important research to proceed.

http://www.sciencealert.com.au/news/20091805-19134.html
http://www.vision.edu.au/news/mediareleases.htm
http://www.vision.edu.au/news/acevs%20saffron.pdf

[Michaelangelica]

Mad about saffron

By Eliza Wood from Don , TAS

Thursday, 10/04/2008

It's a quiet morning on a hillside at Don in the north-west of Tasmania.

Two women in muddy boots are moving between raised beds of spiky grass-like plants.

When the time is right, they bend over and gently pluck at purple flowers that appeared in the night and put them in yellow buckets.

It's the time for harvesting saffron; a bright yellow spice often used in rice dishes.

Melina Parker is harvesting her second crop from a patch of 10,000 saffron corms. Last year it yielded five grams from about 1,000 flowers.

In five year's time 50,000 flowers will bloom, and in nine years Melina and her family will expect to harvest a million by hand.

The timing of the harvest is vital. The flowers come up during the night and there's a window of about 30 minutes the next morning to pick them when they're just opening. If they're left in the sun they wilt.

"If you come up at dusk you can start to see a little wafty, white bit coming up between the green bits and you can see the first formation of a flower and that gives you an idea of how many you'll have the next day," Melina says.

[Michaelangelica]

http://www.academicjournals.org/jmpr...Moghaddasi.pdf

Introduction: Iran is considered to be one of the greatest producers of saffron and nearly 90% of the world's production of saffron comes from Iran. There are varieties of chemical components present in the stigma of the saffron plant.
These chemical components include carbohydrates, minerals, mucilage, vitamins such as riboflavin and thiamine, color pigments such as crocin, anthocyanin, carotene, lycopene, Zeaxanthin and aromatic terpenic essence called "safranal" and flavoring substances such as picrocrocin.
Crocin (C44 H64 O24) is the most influential chemical in the coloring of saffron. Other than crocin, saffron is also made up of free aglycone crocin and a small number of anthocyanin pigments.
The oil soluble color pigments include lycopene, alpha carotene, beta carotene and Zeaxanthin. Results: Saffron may substitute chemical medicines. Some medical properties of saffron are as follows: helps digestion, strengthens the stomach and is anti-tympanites, activates the sexual desire, is analgesic especially for colicky pains of gingivitis, fights tumors and collection of free radicals (thus reacting against cancerous cells), is euphoriant and alleviates neuralgia, is a tranquilizer, cures insomnia, strengthens memory power, improves concentration, reacts against spasm, fights depression and Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases, controls blood pressure disorders, lowers high cholesterol levels, cures iron deficiency (anemia) in girls, reduces chances of such heart diseases as arteriosclerosis and helps improve heart conditions, cures respiratory disorders such as asthma, cough, influenza and colds, helps blood circulation in the retina, and cures macula lutea caused by old age.
Conclusion: The application of saffron in cancer-treatment experiments performed on laboratory animals has proved successful.

[Pakanohida]

My fellow North Americans, you can purchase true Saffron crocus bulbs from www.fedcoseeds.com

[Michaelangelica]

Note: Saffron (Crocus sativus) should not be confused with meadow saffron, also known as autumn crocus (Colchicumautumnale L.), which is a poisonous plant. Saffron grown in America or Africa has been referred to as American saffron and African saffron, respectively, which is a misnomer, as Carthamus tinctorius is the real American saffron and Lyperia crocea Ecklon is the real African saffron. Saffron should also not be confused with prairie crocus (Anemone patens)

Background

Saffron is the dried stigma of the crocus (Crocus sativus) flower. It is available both as filaments and powder. Around 75,000 blossoms are needed to make a single pound of saffron. For this reason, the price of saffron can range from $50 to $300 per ounce.
Saffron has a long history of use as a spice, medicine, and yellow dye. The crocus was reportedly used by ancient Greek and Roman civilizations and in medieval Egypt.
Saffron may have anticancer, antidepressant, nerve protective, and antioxidant properties and may have effects on the immune system. Saffron has also been studied for its ability to improve symptoms of Alzheimer's disease, asthma, infertility, menstrual problems, and psoriasis.
Evidence

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http://www.naturalstandard.com/index...&title=Saffron