OE

A, F The first half of the sentence is just background, so it is from the second half that you must take your clues. It tells us that producing saffron is very costly, so you can anticipate that the number of blossoms required is a large rather than small number. Based on this, you can reject (C) unique and (B) meager for the first blank, leaving (A) vast. The second blank implies a quality of the flower that makes it rare. The correct choice for the second blank is (F) delicacy. (D) color is irrelevant, and (E) hardiness is the opposite of your prediction.