The homeland of Krokos is ancient Mesopotamia and the surrounding areas where the flower was self-sown. There was Krokos from the plateaus of Kashmir to Ionia and also in Egypt, in Cyclades and in Crete. In Knossos there is a wall painting which represents the (most probably ritual) gathering of Krokos, dating from about 1700 b.C.  The same case is in the relative wall painting in Akrotiri of Τhira island, which is located today in the National Archaeological Museum of Athens.

Cyclades is the only region in Greece where Krokos is continuously used until today from the women who collect it from the mountains. In Crete, even though we are aware of collecting the flower in its wild form and also cultivated until the end of the last century, today it is very hard to find people collecting Krokos or collect it due to tradition. The Krokos cultivated in Kozani is Crocus sativus, the finest of the members of the gender of Iridaceae, which includes 78 more species. That species gives the best saffron.