Saffron Crocus
Crocus sativus
The spice comes from this: red stigmas picked by hand out of an autumn-flowering crocus.
- Type
- Flower · Perennial
- Botanical family
- Mixed / other
- Foliage color
- Green
- Flower color
- Purple and violet
- Sunlight
- Full sun is essential, in a hot south-facing spot.
- Watering
- Keep it dry through summer, then water lightly once growth starts again.
- Feeding
- Bone meal when planting, compost in spring.
- Frost tolerant
- Yes
- Flowering
- October
- Sep–Oct Bud Break
- Oct–Oct Flowering
- Oct–Oct Harvest
- Oct–Nov Growing
- Nov–Dec Leaf Fall
- Jan–Sep Leaf Fall
- Plant spacing
- 3.9 in
- In-row spacing
- 3.9 in
- Between rows
- 5.9 in
- Square-foot density
- Not suited to SFG
- Root system
- A corm with fine roots beneath it
- Working depth
- 4–10 in
- Can reach
- 16 in down where the soil allows
- Spread
- 2–4 in across, about 0.5–1× the width of the plant
- Shallowest pot
- 8 in of soil
A corm is a season’s worth of stored stem: it is spent flowering and a new one forms on top of the old, often with cormlets around it. Roots are shallow and short-lived, so the planting depth and the drainage are what decide whether it comes back.
The corms multiply each year and the clump gets crowded and stops flowering after four or five seasons, so a saffron bed is lifted, split and replanted on that cycle.
The habit is Saffron Crocus’s own; the figures are what that habit usually comes to at this size, not a measurement of this species. Roots follow the soil either way: a compacted pan, a high water table or heavy clay stops them well short of any of it, and deep open ground lets them go further.
- Cats and dogs
- Recorded toxic
Recorded as toxic to cats and dogs by Pet Poison Helpline.
The Pet Poison Helpline Crocus row is genus level (Crocus spp.) and is about the genus, so it covers our species, and it names dogs and cats. A genus row may warn but never clear, which is what admits it here. The ASPCA Meadow Saffron and Autumn Crocus rows are both Colchicum autumnale, a different genus that shares the common names, and the ASPCA carries no Crocus row at any rank.
Thyme, Lavender
Green-leaved flowers, like this one.
The Cottage Garden Companion — the gardener's herbarium at cottagegardencompanion.com