Description
The fruit of the Rosa species, or rose hips, are sweet-tasting and rich in nutrients such as vitamin C. They have traditionally been used for reducing inflammation and pain, as well as immune health support. Rosehips can be eaten as they are, made into syrups, added to soups, or made into candies, offering both savory and sweet flavors. Rosehips have also been dried and incorporated into jewelry such as beaded bracelets or necklaces, symbolically equipping its recipient with good medicine and safety. Even when made into jewelry, the dried beads can be rehydrated by being placed into a cup of hot water and consumed as a tea.
Audio Transcript
So one of the plants that we collect a lot is rosehips. There are so many different varieties of rosehips. Rosehips are just the fruit of the rose. And there’s roses found in pretty much every environment and every landscape. And all of those rosehips are usable. They don’t all taste good. Some taste better than others. But they hold an enormous amount of vitamin C. So they’re really a good medicine plant. And there’s so many different ways of using them.
One of the most common ways is just to collect and dry them and use them to make your tea. That tea is going to be full of vitamin C. So it’s a really great medicine to keep on hand for coughs, colds, flu, cyst seasons, all of those times where we’re fighting off constant germs. But you can also use them in fun ways. You can make syrups from them. You can make candies and even using them as savories. There’s certain varieties that are better than others taste-wise. Rosa rugosa being an invasive or, perhaps naturalized because other things are using it, so it does have some really great practical uses in our environment. They’re actually the best tasting rosehips. They’re quite large; when we harvest them you cut them open, you clean the seeds out of the inside and all of that fleshy outside, it kind of tastes like a tomato. So we like to eat them just as they are. It’s not a ton of flesh on them, but it’s enough to get that nice little tomato-y flavor. So just eating them as they are, but also drying them and using them like a sun-dried tomato. And you can throw them into soups. So there’s lots of really practical ways of cooking with them. And depending on how you prepare and serve, they can be either savory or sweet. So you get all that good medicine, good food resource.
Another great one, because we’re stuck with it, is the multiflora rose. They are an invasive species that are all over our landscape. In the fall when they start to drop their leaves and their flowers, you see all of those ripe rosehips. That’s the perfect time to go and harvest them. You can grab them all. They are similar in that Rosa rugosa taste. They have that tomato-y flavor, but they’re a little bit more on the sweet side, so they’re even more pleasant. So they’re actually quite tasty, they’re just much smaller. So go ahead and use them. Then they’re not dropping seed and replenishing all over the place. If we start to interact with some of these plants, take the benefit of them, we can help to control their spread when we’re stuck with them. So introducing yourself to all the different varieties of rosehip, trying them out, seeing which ones taste better. Even the rose petals themselves before they drop, those are edible. Some again, some taste better than others, but they’re great as a decorative in salads and dessert dishes and even making teas from the flower petals themselves.
Sometimes rosehips were dried and incorporated into jewelry. So making beads from dried rosehip and those beads being fashioned into bracelets or necklaces were often gifted to children. And in doing so, it’s symbolically putting good medicine around them to kind of keep them safe. There’s the symbolism of putting medicine around their bodies that they can carry and wear, but there’s also the practicality of it. Those dried beads made from rosehips at any time can be put into a cup of hot water and rehydrated into a physical medicine that they can consume and receive the wellness from. Any time that things are done kind of ceremonially or symbolically also have a practical purpose and that’s always important to remember.
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