Saffron of the Cehennem cave
In Roman times the best saffron grew in the thickets at the bottom of the Cehennem cave in Silifke. In 1995 Baytop went to the area to see if this still went on. No one was gathering saffron, and the Yörüks did not know zerde, the famous saffron dessert. Yet even the Hittites knew saffron; they called it azupiru, Akkadian for “saffron plant.”
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.
Saffron in the first Turkish drug book