spring, flowers, saffron, thoughts

london 7pm 9.9C sunday 2016.

its always nice to see the plants waking up and sprouting buds and putting out early flowers. they certainly get a lot of attention, each flower is a the bright spot appearing in the general greyness, nice for us humans to see, but i wonder how useful it is to the plants… there cannot be that many insects so early in the year to pollinate them. and it’s not not that many plants nowadays ever get a chance to bear fruits either. all that effort and energy spent to produce flowers when we humans grow them just for the show.

i mean just take cherry blossoms, so many of them blooming in japan, but we dont hear of any   corresponding glut of cherries harvested later in the year , do we? so all those blossoms produce sterile results. it is the same here in london, all the cherry blossoms never produce any fruits at all. we would go through alot of trouble and selection to plant cherry blossoms just for their blooms at the spring time only… and we are not even interested in the fruits, so that we deliberately select sterile plants to propagate.

but when we look at farming and how we rear sheep, and cows very selectively, to eat and not for show, it tells me that we are meat eaters, and not fruit eaters. and too right … you have never heard of a fruitarian have you? someone who only eats fruits.

we also grow other spring flowers, daffodils and crocuses. but have u noticed the crocuses we grow are not the same variety that gives us stamens that we can dry to make saffron?

when i first heard that saffron is the stamen of crocuses i thought i could harvest that from all the crocuses that i see growing everywhere in spring in the parks in london. but it seems the variety grown is not the one that saffron is harvested. i wonder why? surely it would be great to kill two birds with one stone, to grow them for beauty as well as harvest them for the saffron. it must be a win win for everyone…. but no… why is that? anyone can explain? is there a body trying to monopolise saffron? to keep its price high? it cannot be difficult to cultivate the crocus sativus, which is the one that produces the saffron stamens and plant them in the parks and fields. added. i had a re-read, and noticed me using the saying… killing two birds… hmm, these sayings are so commonplace, that i tend to use them without thinking, but perhaps they are a product of an olden day when people are quite practical, and hunting birds for food is a survival thing rather than sport, and is part of people’s everyday life.