ETYMOLOGY OF THE WORDS CROCUS AND SAFFRON. v 



The cultivation of Crocus sativus has a much wider range, extending with 

 intervals from England* along the Mediterranean basin, Asia Minor and Persia to 

 Kashmir. It seems to be sporadically grown in China, where the use of Saffron 

 is of comparatively modern introduction,! and is probably cultivated in some parts 

 of Thibet. But it is not grown in India, except quite locally in Kashmir, nor in 

 Arabia, nor in Egypt, and we have no evidence that it was ever grown in any of 

 these countries. This cultivated form must have originated in very early times 

 from one or more of the allied wild forms which are found east of the Adriatic, 

 the Italian plants having generally shorter stigmata.;]; 



(B.) Cartftamus tinctorius, L., Safflower,§ or bastard Saffron. German, saflor. 

 Spanish, alazor. Greek, knekos (kp^kos), whence the Latin miens; but both terms 

 were probably generic terms for thistles. 



Sanskrit, Kusumbha, $^, with cognate names in the modern Aryan lano- ua aes 

 of India. & ° 



t-y o ? 



Arabic, qurtum, ^j whence the medieval Greek Kovphovp, cited by Du Cange, 

 and the botanical Latin Carthamus ; also 'usfur, j^ and some other less usual names. 



This plant is a thistly composite, more unlike a Crocus than a Crocus is unlike 

 a rose. The red or yellow dye is obtained from the bright orange florets, and the 

 seeds yield oil. It has long been cultivated in Egypt, || Northern India, and other 

 countries in the latitude of Egypt and the Southern Mediterranean, but no botanist 

 has yet found the plant in a really wild state. De Candollef plausibly argues that 

 it may be indigenous in some of the little known parts of Arabia. The dried florets 

 are very like the Saffron of the market, and have been commonly employed to 

 adulterate it. Safflower is, according to Dairy's Useful Plants of India, p. u6, the 

 Crocus Indicus of Rumphius, although not ' Indian Saffron.' This name of C. Indicus, 

 like the use of 'Indian Saffron' for Turmeric, has misled lexicographers.** 



(C.) Curcuma longa, Roxb. (Amomum curcuma, Gmel.), Turmeric ft or Indian 

 Saffron. German, Gilb'VJtirz. 



* Saffron-Walden in Essex takes its name from the Saffron formerly grown there on a large scale ; see 

 Fuller's Worthies, Essex. 



t See Chapter VI. 



% The Italian wild forms can be, and occasionally are, locally used for their Saffron. 



§ The derivation of this word has not been traced. Hehn, Kulturpianzen, p. 271, edition, 1877, attempts 

 to trace it through an Italian asforo and asjtori, whose existence I have not verified, to the Arabic 'usfur "• " ' 

 but until this etymology is better supported, it will be safer to consider the word a mere variant of Saffro/rte 

 dyes having been much confused. 



II The grave cloths of the mummies are dyed with it. De Candolle, Origin of Cultivated Plants, p. 164. 

 1 Ubi supra. ** See Note to page viii. 



"Turmeric is a gross corruption of the French name terremerite, from the low Latin 'terra merita ' which 

 itself is probably a barbarous corruption."— Skeat. 



