Valuable Rose Hips



Rose hips have recently become popular as a healthy treat for pet chinchillas. Chinchillas are unable to manufacture their own Vitamin C and lack the proper internal organs to process many vitamin-C rich foods. Rose Hips provide a sugarless, safe way to increase the Vitamin C intake of chinchillas and guinea pigs.

 

Rose hips are also fed to horses. The dried and powdered form can be fed at a maximum of 1

tablespoon per day to improve coat condition and new hoof growth.

 

The fine hairs found inside rose hips are used as itching powder. Rosehips are scented with essential oils and can be used as a potpourri room air freshener.

 

Roses are propagated from hips by removing the seeds from the aril (the outer coating) and sowing just beneath the surface of the soil, the seeds take at least three months to germinate.

 

In World War II, the people of Britain were encouraged through letters to The Times newspaper, articles in the British Medical Journal, and pamphlets produced by Claire Loewenfeld, a dietitian working for Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children to gather wild-grown rose hips and to make a Vitamin C syrup for children. This was because German submarines were sinking many commercial ships: citrus fruits from the tropics were very difficult to import.

 

Rose hips were used in many food preparations by the indigenous peoples of the Americas

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Replies

  • Hello Bonny, Thanks for that information about rosehips. I've recently removed hips from climbing roses in my inner-city yard, but kept them a while only to admire their beauty. Are the hips used for animal food supplements taken from a specific type of rose?

    Rose hips were gathered wild in New Zealand during and after WWII for rosehip syrup which was manufactured for similar reasons - to provide Vitamin C for sickly children. I grew up in Otago, where sweet briar grows prolifically especially in Central Otago. I vaguely remember someone in our family collecting rosehips which were sent to Dunedin to be processed into Robinson's Rose Hip Syrup.

    In a charming book called Wildflowers of Central Otago, by Peter Johnson, a page is given to the sweet briar and its bright red hips. Apparently they fetched sixpence a pound. It would take a lot of rosehips to get a pound weight. And a lot of scratches too - they are very thorny bushes! Our childhood early morning wild mushroom gathering for the Dunedin markets was quite lucrative, and much easier.
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