They should be fine as long as, like any fruit, they are not moldy or rotted.

Please note that some taste better then others.

I tend to like the flavor of the non-hybrid and simpler roses, like the rugosa roses, rather then the more common cultivated variaties. I remember the flavor of the rugosa rose hips reminding me of the flavor of apples. Some roses can have a sort of metallic taste to them, which is really unpalatable... and some rose hips have more seediness and less flesh to them.

All rose hips are edible, but as noted above, not all taste good.
According to Liz Druitt ("The Organic Rose Garden"), the roses with the best tasting hips are: Rosa canina, Rosa rugosa rubra, Hansa, Old Blush, and Dortmund.

No harm in trying them--open em up, clean out the seeds, and cook em down into a syrup to see if they're palitable (some are better cooked than raw.)

Tell us if they're good and the names of them if you remember.

thanks burntplants,

I already cut the roses back this summer so I didn't let them form hips. A year or two ago I did unintentionally but didn't try them. Perhaps I will next year.

They had some relatively inocuous looking fungus on the leaves and at the time I was paranoid because the huge blueberry I had transplanted didn't seem happy.

I'm looking for Rosa varieties that are good for making Nypon soppa, the traditional Swedish fruit soup. The rose hips that I have picked that work are oval, very firm, and bright red/orange in color. Anybody know some varieties that fit? Varieties used in Sweden? Elsewhere?

The point of how the hips taste is one thing to consider but another is the amount of flesh vs seeds is another. I grow Rosa villosa (The Apple Rose) which has a wonderful flavor and whose hips are very easy to clean as well. They ripen in July and are the deepest red and as large as the end of one's thumb so they are easy to harvest. A real conversation piece in the garden too.

Some rose hips are just a whole lot of seeds with a thin skin. Rosa glauca is a good example of this.

Fantastic - just the thread I was searching for.. Although, I was wondering, does anyone have any experience with the hips of Rosa glauca (Rosa rubrifolia)..?

Cheers! :)
Melanie

See S. Facciola, CORNUCOPIA II (1998, Kampong Publications) for several pages of roses with edible uses, what those uses are and where these roses have been sold.

Anybody know about wild roses?

Rosa rubiginosa (common local name: rosa mosqueta) grows wild in our patagonic region and is widely used for teas, jam and cosmetic oil...

Paul.

Roses are not native south of the equator so any rose in Argentina must have been introduced.
R. canina was used in England during world war II as a source of vitamin C - collected and mde into a syrup which was bottled and used medicinally. R. rubrifolia (glauca) is a form of canina so it would be similar in value. I once collected hips from a miniature rose and turned them into jam - they were big orange hips and made a rather bland jam but very good on hot biscuits.

I have read that the "hairs" inside some rose hips can irritate people's throats . . . no personal experience, though! When my son was in kindergarten, his teacher requested "healthy, unusual snacks" that would "broaden the children's circle of experience," so Spencer thought it would be fun to take rose hips. He picked a bunch of them from our rosa moyesii; we carefully washed them and everything, and he took them to school in a tupperware container, but the teacher wouldn't let him pass them out at snack time. I don't think he ever forgave her. :)

Rosa glauca hips look just like chocolate before they turn red . . . they certainly LOOK yummy! {{gwi:670967}}

I recently obtained a small plant of rugosa Dart's Dash from an herb farm near Gettysburg, because it is supposed to have exceptionally large hips. Has anyone tried any from that variety?

Great! Just the info I was looking for. I have just moved and my gardfen is full of neglected roses whcih had developed suckers. These in turn produced white single flowers over the summer and now are covered in rose hips. I was wary of doing anything with them until I read this thread, so thank you. I will wait till the first frosts then harvest and make rosehip syrup (assuming the magpies don't get there first). Thanks, everyone

If anyone is interested, I have seeds for Rosa rugosa, both pink & white types.
Robin

Here is a link that might be useful: My Trade Page

Can you grow roses from seeds? I thought the seeds were sterile, or that it would grow a wild ancesteral variety from the hybrid? Have I been misinformed?
If so, I would LOVE some of those seeds you have to offer!

RE: Rugosa rose hips - flavor of apples / Eglantine rose hips - fragrance of apples / Rosa villosa - Apple Rose

Rose Family: Rosaceae, divided into four subfamilies, contains between 3,000-4,000 species within 100-160 genera.

1.Rosoideae: Rose, Blackberry, Raspberry, Strawberry, Cinquefoil (Potentilla), and Avens (Geum).
2.Spiraeoideae: Spiraea and Sorbaria
3.Pomoideae or Maloidea: Apple, Crab apples, Pear, Quince, Rowan, Loquat, Hawthorn, Serviceberry, Cotoneaster, Whitebeam, and California holly.
4.Prunoideae or Amygdaloideae: Plum, Peach, Apricot, Cherry, Almond.

Economically important crop plant families: Grass, Pea, Rose (in that order).

We have an abundance of wild roses, are they're hips ok for tea as well??