Look to herbal and edible plant sources for the best varieties for herbal and culinary use. But outside that, big fleshy hips are what you want - that sounds like I'm talking about women in a Rubens' painting doesn't it? *grin* Ahem, even little hipped roses are usable but just more work. You might try Richters, Raintree Nursery, and other fruit tree vendors for sources.

Apothecary rose is a specific variety of Rosa gallica, albeit a 1,000 year old variety. Antique rose sources also carry this one. I have this one. Beautiful. I had to learn the hard way not to prune antique roses like the modern hybrids. Read up before pruning.

Every rugosa rose I've ever grown had large hips. I have a few good fruiting varieties here like "Alba," "Frau Dagmar," and "Blanc Double de Coubert." They are very nice.

FataMorgana

Thanks for the information, they look like very pretty roses :)

Do they taste good?

There are rugosas that are native to the USA that are great for making hips. I've seen them on Long Island Sound - those are called beach plums; and I collected a gallon of hips from huge clumps of rugosas in New Mexico.

You could ask this question on the antique rose forum, too, you'd probably get some good answers there.

Taste like rose hips, which I've always found to be a very mild flavor.

FataMorgana

Here's a pic of the beach plum I mentioned above. This was on Long Island.

Thanks again for the suggestions folks.

The beach plum pic looks an awful lot like a rose in my neighbors yard that is eating the fence up. It's pretty, but the hips were rather small and they weren't all that great enough to be worth collecting. It also looks a lot like a wild rose growing down by my pond that had small hips didn't taste too bad, but didn't really produce enough hips to make a pot of tea with.

Maybe I just don't know enough about roses to tell the differences.

Here's my thumb (for reference) against Rosa rugosa 'Rubra'. These hips are the largest from my roses (and I have many).