When picking rose hips…

… pick the ones that offer themselves to you.

Those are the good ones.

You’ll know which ones. The others are just mean.

This is actually a syilx gathering principle. You can see the sense of it clearly in this abandoned apple tree.

Here the branch that has produced the most over the years is producing early-ripening fruit now. This fruit won’t keep long, and will be thin on nutrients because the branch can’t deliver then. The branches in the middle of the tree, even older, are producing green, sugarless fruit. It’ll keep longer, but will have even less nutrition, because it doesn’t get the light. In other words, you need a healthy stem, in the light. Not an unhealthy one like this…

… with black fruit. Young as it is, your hands won’t want to touch that. Just ask your hands. They know. This is the one: