Finally!

The weather’s nice enough to start clearing out our beds. IButt’s been a long, chilly, frustrating spring. But there’s nothing like a crocus to remind you that you still don’t miss the city.

Then again, you should not forget Florence White’s sage warning in Flowers as Food: Receipts and Lore from Many Sources. (My copy is inscribed “Mr. H Lynn, from Auntie, July, 1934.”):

The wild crocus is poisonous, and no one with “a little knowledge” should experiment with the cultivated crocus. If you wish to use Saffron, buy it from the chemist.

Saffron was originally imported from the East and was a somewhat important article of commerce; the seeds and bulbs were so jealously guarded in its native country that to part with either was to incur danger of being put to death.

It is said that it was brought to England by a pilgrim who stole a flower head and hid it in a hollow in his staff, and was first grown at Saffron Walden, in Essex, to which it gave its prefix, its culture eventually becoming an important British industry.