Wild rose hips taste sweet and sour and are the fruits of autumn. In this article you will find out what you should consider when harvesting.
Wild rose hips are the (pseudo) fruits of some native rose species. Depending on the variety, the color palette of rose hips ranges from dark red to light red to orange. They can be round or oval.
Why is it interesting to harvest wild rose hips? On the one hand, the regional superfood is rarely available in stores as a raw product. On the other hand, they are also extremely healthy as they contain a lot of vitamin C (more than lemons per gram) as well as anti-inflammatory antioxidants. Wild rose hips taste sweet and sour.
Where can you find wild rose hips?
Rose hips are the fruit of some rose plants. When the flowering period is over, you can discover the red fruits on the bush. The rose hips contain kernels, the seeds or nuts of the rose plant. Not every rose grows rose hips, but you can find them on many wild rose varieties such as the apple or dog rose.
Rose hips usually grow on large shrubs at the edges of forests, on paths or in bushes and hedges. Roses like sunny locations and nutrient-rich soil. It is better to avoid rose hips on roadsides, as they could be contaminated with fine dust. Just look for rose hips on your next walk. Once you have found a bush, keep checking back, as not all the fruit on the bush will ripen at the same time.
The MundraubMap from the anti-fall fruit platform mundraub.org also provides information. This shows the locations of fruit-bearing plants on a map near you. Basically, you can harvest wild rose hips anywhere. However, pay attention to property rights and handle the plants with care.
What is there to consider when harvesting wild rose hips?
The best time to harvest wild rose hips is from September to December. It is best to harvest when the sun is shining (e.g. at midday), as the vitamin content is higher then. After the first frost on cool autumn nights, rosehips are said to taste more intense because the sugar content increases. However, the skin of the fruit also becomes mealy due to frost and is no longer as firm. However, rose hips are tasty throughout the harvest season. The best time to harvest also depends on how you want to use the rose hips. If you want to process them further, you should harvest them early, if you want to eat them raw, it can also be a later point in time.
Be careful not to confuse rose hips with other red fruits found on shrubs, such as deadly nightshade. However, these fruits are usually much darker (rather black) in color. If you are unsure, better keep your hands off it.
When you pick the rose hips, you should be careful as the bushes have thorns or prickles. If necessary, wear sturdy gardening gloves and clothing that won’t snag you.
Eat wild rose hips
Be careful, you can’t just put wild rosehips straight from the bush in your mouth. Some of the rosehip is not edible raw. A part of the rosehip is not edible raw: the core of the rosehip, which is inside, has hairs with barbs; these can cause itching on skin contact. But what you can do: If the rose hips are ripe and soft enough, you can press them together with your fingers. The marrow should come out on one side – you can then snack on it right away – and the seeds stay inside.
At home, you wash off the collected rose hips with cold water. Remove the stalk, bud base and seeds from each fruit. Be sure to wear gloves. Another option is to boil the whole rose hips in hot water until soft and then squeeze them through a sieve. This way the cores are left behind. How you prepare your collected wild rose hips depends on how you want to process them further.
If you have harvested wild rosehips, you should eat or process them immediately after harvesting. They will keep in the fridge for a maximum of two to three days.
Use wild rose hips
You can make a variety of things from rose hips. Even if you have collected them from nature, you should wash them thoroughly with cold water before use. Note: If you want to benefit from the many vitamins in wild rose hips, only heat them slightly when processing them, as they lose some of them when they are cooked.
On the one hand, you can process them fresh:
Jam: Prepare rosehip jam. This can be used in many ways: it can be used as a spread on your bread, but can also be used in pastries such as cookies or donuts. You can also prepare mousse or jelly from wild rose hips.
Liqueur: You can conjure up delicious rosehip liqueur with sugar and a schnapps of your choice.
Juice: You can filter rosehip juice by boiling it with water, sugar and a little citric acid.
Syrup: Rosehip syrup keeps for a particularly long time and can refine all drinks and dishes.
Tea: You can dry the rosehip seeds and brew a tea from them. It is important that you put them through a sieve and shake them several times so that as many hairs as possible are gone. You don’t want these in your tea. You can store the dried seeds in an airtight container. You need two to three teaspoons of rosehip seeds per cup and leave them in hot water for eight to ten minutes.
Rosehip Oil: It contains many vitamins, healthy fatty acids and minerals.
On the other hand, wild rose hips are also an all-rounder in the dried version:
Instructions for drying the fruit can be found in our article Drying rose hips: how to preserve them. As a guide, firm fruits are often a little better for drying, as softer ones can begin to rot during the drying process.
You can store them as whole dried fruits or process them into rosehip powder. With both variants, you can add them to your smoothie, muesli or porridge, for example, or give your salad a sweet kick. A classic use is a delicious rosehip tea.
Another possible use is to use rosehips as decoration, such as in your autumn decorations or in the Advent wreath.
