Roses have a lot more to offer than just their beautiful blooms. In late summer and early fall, beautiful rose hips take over the plant to put on a gorgeous show of color. But that’s not all: If you harvest these hips, you can take advantage of the many health benefits they offer.
Rose hips are loaded with vitamin C – a perfect way to boost your immune system!
Photo Credit: Nancy Engel
While not ripe, this young rose hip still shows the interior anatomy of the developing flower ovary containing its seeds.
Photo Credit: Maureen Gilmer
Once-blooming elegantine roses bear smooth fruit and have foliage that smells like fresh apples when crushed.
Photo Credit: Maureen Gilmer
Rugosa rose hips ripen at season’s end just as the foliage begins to fade. If you don’t harvest it, the fruit will remain even after a snowfall, creating bright red accents in the cold season.
Photo Credit: Maureen Gilmer
Tests prove that ounce for ounce, rose hip pulp contains more vitamin C than citrus! It’s also got beta-carotene, bioflavinoids, calcium, citrates, citric acid, iron malates, malic acid, niacin, phosphorus and vitamins A, B1, B2, E and K. As if that’s not enough, rose hips’ astringency makes them as good as cranberries for urinary tract problems for humans (and dogs per my veterinarian). Virtually all roses produce fruit containing these similar nutrients.
Both ever-blooming and once-blooming roses produce hips, but some (like carpet roses), bear hips too small to be worthwhile. The once-bloomers make harvesting easy because all the hips ripen at the same time. Fortunately, most wild roses (or those found naturalized at abandoned homes) are once-bloomers. The easiest way to harvest ever-bloomers like tea roses is to simply stop clipping off spent flowers near season’s end so the plants have enough time to produce their large fruit before killing frosts spoil the crop.
While rose hips start out green as the seed develops inside, they’ll ripen to bright red, orange or purple with fall’s short days and cool nights. The color tells you when hips are ripe for harvest, but you can also take a nibble to test them yourself.
A ripe hip also feels soft to the touch because it’s composed of sugar-rich flesh that surrounds the seeds. One end will bear the stem and the other the residual calyx that once enclosed the flower bud. Rose seeds are packed with prickly fibers into a dense mass surrounded by this outer fleshy covering.
Preparation of rose hips involves separating the seeds and fibers from the useful flesh. It’s a tedious job, slicing each hip in half and scooping seeds and fibers out one by one, but it’s the best way to use fresh hips for tea or to mince and add to baking recipes like cookies and muffins. (This tedious hip-preparation job may explain why the big shooter marble-sized hips of the Rosa rugosa hybrids make the plant the favorite species for harvesting. These nearly disease-free, upright roses can be grown in long hedges at fence lines and property boundaries. They’re easy to pick, and such extensive plantings ensure you’ll get enough fruit each year to work with.)
You can preserve your rose hips by freezing the freshly processed fruit. Just take bits of the clean fruit, lay them out on a cookie sheet or wax paper without touching each other and pop them into the freezer. Once frozen, bag them up in sealed bags and return to the freezer.
The best way to use these frozen bits is as a winter cold remedy: Defrost, then crush and simmer in hot water for 5 minutes. Strain the tea and drink with honey to soothe a sore throat.
Rose hips also make excellent jam, but you may not have enough hips for a whole recipe. It’s more common to use a standard fruit jam recipe and replace the fruit cup for cup with rose hips. But if you’ve got a lot of hips, here’s one easy recipe that makes a sweet, healthy jam:
Pure Rose Hip Jam
Ingredients
- 4 cups ripe rose hips
- 3 tablespoons lemon juice
- 2 cups sugar
- Water and canning jars
(Note: You don’t need to add any pectin because rose hips are naturally rich in this substance and will gel on their own.)
Gather ripe hips and remove residual stems and calyx cleanly. Wash thoroughly to remove any dust or bugs. Boil fruit in 4 cups water with lemon juice for half an hour or until very soft. (This breaks down the rose hips so you can separate out the seeds and fibers from the flesh.) Use a coarse sieve to press the boiled rose hips through to remove the seeds, then use a finer sieve to separate the fibers. (The result is pure rose hip flesh.) Return the juice and pulp to the boiling pan and stir in 2 cups of sugar. Bring to a boil, then simmer until it reaches 220 degrees F. Turn off heat and ladle into sterilized canning jars. Your jam will keep a long time in the refrigerator. To store elsewhere for up to a year, seal with standard Mason jar lids according to manufacturer’s instructions (or use the traditional layer of melted paraffin wax). Store in a cool, dark, dry place.
So make the most of your roses this fall! When the hips are ripe, get out and gather them. Whether you make a sweet jam or a vitamin C-rich tea, enjoying rose hips is a great way to boost your health all winter long!
