Even the Thorny Rose Longs to Save Us
Natural medicine is all around us - the rose's glory reaches beyond her beauty
When I was a young girl, my older brothers used to let me tag along to our local “health food store” as they called it. The old man who owned the shop always gave me a free maple-leaf shaped sweet made of pure maple sugar.
I was about six or seven years old and I liked to read the backs of the vitamin bottles they purchased. One, in particular, that always fascinated me was the bottle of vitamin C tablets, for the label stated that the vitamin C came from rose hips. The description conjured up images of personified roses with large lady hips. Little did I know how those roses might help save us all one day.
Free Vitamin C Might Be Right Under Your Nose - Literally!
Over these past few years of unprecedented ‘troubles’ and surprising discoveries, I’ve truly taken to heart that food is medicine. Long after the fantasy of personified big-bottom lady roses faded from my mind, I realized that rose hips were a great source of vitamin C.
As a young girl and even an older teen, my father often took me on long walks through the garden, in which he and my mother cultivated a plethora of rose varieties, hibiscus, other flowers, and basic vegetables. Our walks sometimes extended further into the acres of citrus groves he owned.
Side note: He was a jeweler and clock maker by profession, but he loved growing all manner of beautiful and fragrant and delicious things.
Anyway, during these cherished, quiet times together, he pointed out the various plants and told me about their healing properties, always emphasizing that their gifts to us extended far beyond beauty, fragrance, and (for the edible ones) nourishment.
I remember one time, in particular, as we strolled amongst the neat rows of blossoming orange and grapefruit trees, he mentioned that rose hips contain far more vitamin C than citrus fruits. He also claimed these fruits of rose were related to apples and quinces.
This astonished me because countless TV commercials and even my school lessons touted citrus fruits as the gold standard of foods rich in this life-giving vitamin. Rose hips? Really? I believed him, of course, for I had no reason not to, but I also tucked this information into some far off corner of my mind to ponder on another occasion.
If citrus fruits, and even tomatoes, could provide this nutrient, rose hips could remain on the roses. Why would I need to harvest these from my parents’ considerable rose garden or (once I fully flew the nest) my own? Well, here we are and our current circumstances answered those questions for me unequivocally.
Cultivating, Harvesting, and Using the Fruits of Rose
Take the first step in cultivating rose hips by not dead heading your rose bush. Dead heading refers to the practice of removing spent rose blooms to encourage further blooms and improve the bush’s aesthetic appearance. Nothing wrong with this, but if you do it, you won’t have any rose hips to harvest when the time comes. Rather, leave your spent blooms on the cane so its hips (wink) can grow.
Rose hips start out green — like other fruits — changing to an orangish red color in autumn. Some rose varieties produce dark purple hips, with some almost black. They’re typically gathered right after the first frost. I don’t know why one must wait until after the first frost, but that’s what my father taught me.
Methods for processing and using rose hips depends on your purpose. If you’d like to dry them and use them as a tea, you’ll need to remove the seeds first. Just cut them in half, and scoop out the seeds. Dry the cleaned out hips for later use as a tea or in cooking. They add a bright citrus-like taste to food as well as infusing your dish with potent vitamin C.
Pro tip: I dry them in my food dehydrator on low heat (95 degrees), but you can also just put them in a towel-lined basket in the kitchen for air drying.
You can also make rose hip syrup or jam with your harvest. Rose hip syrup will stay potent with vitamin C for about six to nine months — long enough to last your family through the colder months and beyond. I’m not adding the recipes here because I’ve already gone on so long. But if you’d like another post with a couple of recipes, let me know. If I get at least eight interested people, I’ll gladly share.
Learn more about possible therapeutic uses for rose hips here. Or…
Public Service Alert: Don’t Eat a Green Rose Hip Right Off the Bush
“His new life offered him numerous other pleasures…The taste of his first cod, which he caught with the line and baited hook and fried in canned butter. The taste of boiled seabird eggs. The taste of wild rose hips that he harvested from the bushes down by the cove.” The Lighthouse, p. 12, Michael D. O’Brien
I bought the book, from which I pulled this quote, for DS in early 2020. O’Brien is one of our favorite authors. This work is a bit of departure from his other fiction and is quite well-suited for men; though, I read it too. It was in reading the line about the wild rose hips, which reminded me of my father’s teachings, which struck me as vital given the ‘troubles’ our world was facing at the time.
I went out and plucked one right off of the bush in my garden and popped it in my mouth. I do not recommend this sort of rashness. It was green, VERY sour. It tasted like those nuclear sour candies my boys used to love. Even so, I realized at that moment how there are no coincidences, how every moment has a purpose, and how God always works everything for our good. Here’s to the rose-hips rose-hips hooray!
Hawthorn is one of my dear favourite medicines. Her leaves, flowers and berries are wonderful for teas, tinctures etc :-) Enjoy getting to know her!
I learned a couple years ago about why the best harvest is after the first freeze! This goes for Hawthorn Berries (excellent heart medicine) as well. The first freeze is a signal to the plant that winter has arrived, so all the focus and energy pumps INTO the berry/hip to ensure that the seeds inside of these little fertile pouches will be vital. This boots the nutrients and enhances the harmony of all the constituents. I have tons of wild roses on my land this year and am very excited to explore all the seasons of Rose's medicine.