Carthamus tinctoria
Origin: Fraciscio, Italy, via Genoa, Wisconsin
Improvement status: Landrace Cultivar
Seeds per packet: ~50
Germination tested 11/2025: 85%
Life cycle: Annual
'Lorenzo Trussoni' is a family heirloom brought to the US by a man with that name in 1889 from Fraciscio, Italy, near the Swiss border (“about five miles from the Campodolcino region as the goats walked”). Lorenzo and his seeds landed in southwest Wisconsin, specifically the small town of Genoa on the Mississippi River. He and his descendants and some of their Italian-American neighborshave maintained this charming memento of home ever since.
The seed began to reach wider notice after its 2015 donation to Seed Savers Exchange by his granddaughter Marilyn Leum of nearby Westby, Wisconsin. Its showy (and spiky) flowers can be used as a pretty cut flower, and the petals can be used as a saffron substitute, adding color (and negligible flavor) to a variety of dishes. But the main culinary reason to grow safflower is for its seeds, which are mainly cold-pressed for their edible neutral-flavored oil, but are used to make desserts and a few other dishes in various parts of the world.
Our seed was grown by our friends Cody Egan and Dylan Bruce of Driftless Seed Supply in Wisconsin.
GROWING TIPS: Safflower is best direct-seeded after soil warms up in spring, but you can start it in flats too, a couple weeks before last frost. Plants grow to one or two feet tall, and often need support once they begin to bloom (a Florida-weave works well if you're growing in rows; a patch of plants might not need much support, as they'll sort of support each other). Plants are quite prickly, so handle with gloves when processing for seed.
