Medea’s garden in Tarabya
According to Baytop, autumn crocus grows abundantly in Colchis, around today’s Batumi. The name colchicine comes from there. The legendary sorceress Medea was also from Colchis. It is told that after fleeing her land she stayed in İstanbul for a time, set up a garden of medicinal plants on the Bosphorus and treated the people. The name of the district, Tarabya, is said to come from the Greek Therapia, “treatment.”
Source: Turhan Baytop, Türkiye’de Bitkiler ile Tedavi: Geçmişte ve Bugün, 3. baskı (yay. haz. Feza Baytop Günergun), Nobel Tıp Kitabevleri, Ankara, 2021 (Baytop, Türkiye’de Bitkiler ile Tedavi (Plant Healing in Turkey), 2021). This is a folk record, not a treatment recommendation.
A festival named after a crocus