Seeing Red: Rose Hips
January 6, 2010
Seeing Red, photo by Kiley_Evanne.
One of my favorite books as a kid was My Side of the Mountain. In it, the teenaged hero Sam Gribley learns how to feed himself and survive in the woods. Inspired by Sam’s example, I got as far as being able to identify rose hips, the red-orange fruit of the rose plant.
When snowshoeing or skiing in the winter, I like to snack on these when I find them. This article about gathering rose hips begins:
Known mostly for beauty in the garden and as a floral declaration of love, roses don’t usually come to mind when we think of either food or nutrition. Yet, all parts of the rose, and especially the hips, are storehouses of Vitamin C and other important nutrients.
Compare the nutritional content of oranges to rose hips and you will find that rose hips contain 25 percent more iron, 20 to 40 percent more Vitamin C (depending upon variety), 25 times the Vitamin A, and 28 percent more calcium.
They’re also a great source of bioflavanoids, pectin, Vitamin E, selenium, manganese, and the B-complex vitamins. Read on for suggestions about gathering and drying them. The BBC has an article about Rose-hips as a possible remedy for arthritis that you might enjoy as well. One tip: you have to leave the blossoms on the rose bush for hips to fully develop.
Check it out bigger or in Kiley’s slideshow.
