Here is a link for a book called "Grasses, Pods, Vines, Weeds: Decorating with Texas Plants" By Quentin Steitz. The link should open to the page on the Mccartney Rose (Rosa bracteata). If you scroll down to look at the heading "Pod Stage", you can find this description: "During development, the hip become fully round and the greenish color mellows to tan, followed by reddish tones.....Five very pointed sepals decoratively top the hip, creating a star like crest. Deepening to reddish mahogany, the hip develops firmly to a smooth surface, having lost the velvety texture, and becomes a decorative pod." If I am understanding this correctly, then it seems like the hip would be velvety tan colored at some stage, before maturing to a smoother reddish hip. The photos that were posted look like a velvety tan hip to me. Here is a link that might be useful: Grasses, Pods, Vines, Weeds: Decorating with Texas Plants By Quentin Steitz

My daughters are fairy-crazy! This year the eldest rec'd "Fairie-ality, the Fashion Collection" from The House of Ellwand (Candlewick Press) for her birthday. Its a large and very beautiful fairy fashion book where the clothes are made of 'natural' woodland fibers: pressed flowers, grasses, seeds/pods, feathers, cast-off snake skin, leaves ... so guess what we are doing with pressed flowers this year :) This spring we were part of a homeschoolers garden tour (our theme being fairies, of course) where the presented craft project was creating notecards and bookmarks with pressed flowers. Last year we collected an assortment of autumn leaves and flowers to press. Using craft paper that had clouds as a background, the girls created an 'autumn wind swirl' that we then framed for their room(inspired by the story "When the Root Children Wake Up" story retold by Audrey Wood, paintings by Ned Bittinger). As they get older (they are now 5 and 8 y.o) we may move away from favourite story inspirations. The older dd has been eyeing some of those beautiful lamp shades and journals that are adorned with skeleton leaves. She's thinking she would like to do something like that so we are thinking about trinket boxes and footstools as potential pressed flower surfaces ...

Yes, that's what you have. If you wish to harvest the seeds, you will have to wait until the pods turn light brown and each section of the top opens up before you harvest them. Seeds need to be removed from the pod, and air-dried for at least 4 days. Some dry them a week or longer. You can either plant them right away or store them in a small ziplock bag in the fridge until later. Nancy

Interesting reading, all of this. I think as long as people approaching middle age and beyond look for a diet regimen that can essentially reverse the aging process--- more energy, fewer to no health problems--- preventing any new illnesses and reversing the lifetime effects of what they've eaten up to that point, there will be studies, books, and food products to satisfy the market. Today's wonder diet or food is usually tomorrow's carcinogen. But alternative (this free, that free) and organic---- if a universal standard is ever adopted--- markets are the fastest sectors of the food industry, so at the least all this specialization is growing the economy :-) Don't you wonder, though, if this will be the next human rights issue.....if the affluent are sure that certain foodstuffs are dangerous long term to human health, how can we allow the poor to consume them with no protections?