Rose

Grieve notes that only buds about to open were gathered for the medicinal drug, and rose buds sometimes flavour tea. Cunningham says a tea of rosebuds drunk before sleep brings prophetic dreams.

In most species the flower has five petals, usually white or pink and in a few species yellow or red. Cunningham calls a chaplet of roses, thorns removed, worn during love spells, or a single rose in a vase on the altar, strong aids to love magic, and says roses carried act as personal protection.

The hips are the rose's fruit, red in the wild roses Kynes describes, high in vitamin C and edible once the irritant hairs are removed; they make jam, jelly, syrup, soup and tea. Cunningham strings them as beads to attract love and uses them in healing; Kynes wears a string of them for support in divination and spirit work, and crumbles dried hips onto the ground in banishing.

Cunningham records a love divination in which a woman named three green rose leaves after her suitors, and the one that stayed green longest gave the answer.

Rose oil, also called attar or otto of roses, is a mixture of essential oils steam-distilled from crushed petals, chiefly of the damask and cabbage roses, and is the basis of rose perfumes. Grieve describes it as light yellow, sometimes tinged green, setting to a soft mass when cooled.

Rose petals flavour food, teas and preserves, and dried red rose petals were long official in pharmacopoeias, latterly mostly for their scent. Cunningham adds petals to healing spells and mixtures, and sprinkles them round the house to calm stress and household upheaval.

Rose water, a product made alongside rose oil, is used in cooking, especially Middle Eastern, Persian and South Asian sweets, and in cosmetics, medicine and religious rites; Grieve notes it as the base of cold cream. Cunningham adds it to love baths and lays a cloth soaked in it on the temples for headache.