Pishuk
For a plant that pushes out of the soil as the snow melts. Pishuk is one of the Kurdish names of joghasem — a wild crocus with an edible corm that people of the Zagros turned to in years of drought and famine. It has at least 47 local names across 12 provinces of Iran.
A year of pishuk
A plant that spends most of the year underground and shows itself only twice.
Leaves
Narrow leaves with a white midstripe come up with the snowmelt. This is when the corms are dug.
Dormancy
The leaves wither and the plant sleeps underground; its spot can no longer be found.
Flower
When the steppe is dry and thorny, a pale violet flower with three red stigmas opens — much like saffron.
47 names for one plant
From Marand to Mamasani, each place knows this small plant by its own name — and together the names trace its range.
The research of Dr Morteza Farhadi
What these pages present rests on years of fieldwork by Dr Morteza Farhadi, anthropologist and professor at Allameh Tabataba’i University, Tehran, and his student collaborators. The credit for this knowledge is his.
Joghasem worldwide
Names in other languages, books and papers, poems and songs, and what science says today.
Read → MapNames map
All 47 local names on a map of Iran, county by county.
Explore → SafetyNot the poisonous autumn crocus
Local names are shared with the toxic Colchicum. Learn the field signs.
Field signs →