Apple-like Fruit

• Roses are distantly related to apple trees, so the fruit of a rose bush look very much like tiny apples. Unlike cyanide-laced apple seeds, however, rose hips and their seeds are perfectly digestible.
  
  

Culinary Uses

• The versatile rose hip is used to make marmalade, jelly, syrup and tea. While the seeds are safe to eat, they can be very bitter and are usually removed before preparing a tea.
  
  

Ready for Harvest

• Rose hips form after the rose bloom has faded, so regularly cutting the flowers will drastically reduce the yield of hips. Ripe hips are bright red, not orange, and still firm when squeezed slightly.
  
  

Native American Use of Rose Hips

• Native Americans have long used rose hips for stews and soups, or as a side vegetable, seasoned with a little salt and butter. The hips were collected from wild rose bushes in the early fall and then preserved by drying.
  
  

A World War II Food

• Because of food and vitamin shortages during World War II, rose-hip collecting was encouraged by both the governments of the United States and Great Britain. Schoolchildren in the UK were given time off from school to gather rose hips.