162 i Flora Unveiled
that had been removed from the ground prematurely, which had not gone through a nor-
mal dormancy process, the resulting plants would have produced leaves but no flowers— a
disaster for the saffron crop. The “mother corm” only flowers for three to five seasons, after
which “she” dies. But her death is not in vain, for her cormlets are now fully matured and
ready to become “mothers” themselves. To start the cycle up again, the gardener removes the
depleted mother corm from the soil at the end of the growing season, divides the individual
cormlets, and replants them in the ground. The flowering shoot emerges when the rains
begin in the autumn, and another three- to five- year cycle begins.
Was Hades a Contractile Root?The Greek version of the Demeter/ Persephone myth involves a violent abduction of
Persephone by Hades, which appears to have no parallel in the religious art and iconography
of Minoan Crete. Some have suggested that Hades’s barbarous act was an embellishment
tacked onto an earlier, more benign, agricultural myth by the violence- prone Greeks.^46 But
perhaps there was an agricultural basis for the abduction scene in the original myth that has
escaped notice.
Crocus corms, and many other types of corms and bulbs, possess contractile roots—
thickened specialized roots that have the unusual ability to contract irreversibly in length.
A diagram of the root system of a saffron crocus corm is shown in Figure 6.16. The mother
corm produces a set of thin fibrous roots from a basal root plate, while the cormlets pro-
duce only thickened contractile roots.^47 These contractile roots grow downward during the
autumn, winter, and spring seasons, anchoring themselves in the soil. During the dry sum-
mer months, they contract vertically and pull the corm down through the soil to its optimum
1 cmMC
DC
CRFRDCCRFigure 6.16 Diagram of a saffron crocus corm with roots. DC, daughter corm; CR, contractile
root; MC, mother corm; FR, fibrous roots.
From Negbi, M., et al. (1989), Growth, flowering, vegetative reproduction, and dormancy in the saffron
crocus (Crocus sativus L.). Israel Journal of Botany 38:95– 113.