The dark red strands called saffron are actually the stigma or filaments of a flower known as the Crocus Sativus. They are propagated using bulbs as these do not grow from seeds. They flower just once a year and the saffron has to be hand-picked between dawn and 10 am to get the best quality. As there are no mechanical methods devised to handle the delicate process of saffron harvesting, manual harvesting is a highly labor-intensive process that adds to the cost of the saffron. But what makes it so costly is that a kilogram of saffron requires about 200,000 such handpicked flowers.