The high cost of saffron is due to the difficulty of manually extracting large numbers of minute stigmas; the only part of the crocus with the desired properties of aroma and flavour. In addition, a large number of flowers need to be processed in order to yield marketable amounts of saffron. A pound of dry saffron (0.45 kg) requires the harvesting of some 50,000 flowers, the equivalent of a football field's area of cultivation. By another estimate, some 75,000 flowers are needed to produce one pound of dry saffron. This too depends on the average size of each saffron cultivar's stigmas. Another complication arises in the flowers' simultaneous and transient blooming. Since some 150,000 crocus flowers are needed to produce just one kg of dry saffron, about forty hours of intense labour, harvesting is often a frenetic affair.
