Something fun I hadn't noticed before

I knew it was only a matter of time… It was actually a thought Ralph Moore had years ago, to create a rose which was not only good for making your environment pretty, but also provided edible, tasty fruit.

Link: www.helpmefind.com/gardening/l.php?l=2.41674.4&tab=1

Hi Kim,

Thanks for posting this. I have been tasting rose hips for years trying to find one that was good to eat so I could use it for breeding. Some of the Rugosas are OK to eat, but nothing special. The description of this rose says it is high in Vitamin C, but does not say anything about taste. I wonder if they taste good.

I think roses have big potential as being an edible plant in the garden. Does anyone know of any roses that have hips that are actually tasty? The tastiest hips I have tasted are Moje Hammarberg, but they are still not tasty enough to market them as “good to eat”.

Shane, have I some rose hips for you! The two tastiest I’ve triad so far, and I’ve tasted MANY, are Sharon’s Delight 'Sharon's Delight™' Rose

and Cl. Winifred Coulter 'Winifred Coulter Cl.' Rose . When very highly colored, they both have a sweetness to them, Neither are what I would term “good tasting”, but they seem to have a great deal more sugar to them than any other I’ve tried. Ralph Moore named Sharon’s Delight for a mutual friend and she used to tease the heck out me that I liked her "tasty hips! LOL!

The bush form of Winifred doesn’t make as large a hip as the climber and in this climate, the climber is never without flower. I used to grow it in Newhall and loved it.

An interesting aside, I’ve long cleaned large quantities of hips in the blender on liquefy. Rugosa hips seem to congeal quickly. Where I could put a full blender on to liquefy of others, Rugosas had to be cut into much smaller batches or they would solidify in the jar and literally stop blending. The blades spin, but the gelatinous glop would just form an air bubble under it and sit there. I don’t know if it’s pectin or what, but I found it interesting. Too bad the green parts of Rugosa stink so badly or it may have other applications. The Rugosa moss hybrids have scent to their “moss” and it is terribly skunky to me.

Jung has been carrying a fruiting Rugosa advertised as such for years. Also, the now defunct rose nursery Roseraie at Bayfields used to say in its catalogs that Spinosissimas had tasty, blackcurrant-like hips.

I’ve never tried either of these, so can’t vouch for them. I once tried to make rose hip jam out of Rugosa hips in my mother-in-law’s kitchen when we lived in Holland. I left the pot unattended and it started to bubble up alarmingly. I got the mess all cleaned up (I thought) before she came home. However, I had failed to notice the jam on the ceiling. I still get teased about this after 10 years.

Link: Jung Seed: Vegetable Seed, Flower Seed, and Garden Supplies

Thanks for that laugh, Betsy! I have a recipe for Coca Cola Jello a friend received from her pediatrician years ago. She was calcium deficient and allergic to milk. This contains 16 oz. of cream cheese and is actually quite good, more of a side salad than a too sweet glop. A friend and I made it at her house and messed up the cream cheese, so she reheated it on the range and I put the mixer into it. We had Calamine Lotion colored gelatin all over the ceiling, each other, you name it! What a mess! I believe you could still find evidence of it in the heavily textured plaster in her kitchen several years later when she sold the house! LOL!

The Swedes love rose hip soup. Traditionally, they used R. dumalis. The Swedish name for R. dumalis is ‘Nyponros’, which means ‘hip rose’, to distinguish it from similar-looking dog rose species whose hips are not considered to be good for eating. R. dumalis is the seed parent of ‘Vitaminrose Rosamunde’, the rose that Kim posted. I’ve done a few crosses with R. dumalis, but haven’t gotten anything worth keeping yet.

This PhD thesis on the “Domestication of wild roses for fruit production” studied crosses between R. dumalis coriifolia, R. dumalis dumalis, R. rubiginosa, and R. villosa mollis:

Link: diss-epsilon.slu.se:8080/archive/00000670/01/Agraria480.pdf

I wrote about this earlier this year in some other thread. It is one of my long-term goals to breed a cultivar that would be useful for jam/jelly, honey and beer. If that doesnt sound like Oregon then I do not know what does, lol.

I think that a rose used for agriculture instead of horticulture specifically needs to be well thought out. It has to be more than just a rose with big hips high in vitamin C. It would have to taste appropriate, bloom when it is logistically optimal, be appropriate in architecture for a specific harvest method, have fruits which do not have those painful fiber thingies in them, have appropriate fruit skin … have smme sort of pollen that isnt distasteful…and be attractive to b33z :smiley:

Thornlessness would be nice but so would world peace and a politician with half a soul :slight_smile:

My Rosa pomifera (not the double form, this is the real version) is still growing out. It was a pain to get a hold of. It seems to sell out fast at the very few places that carry it, which are mainly specialty nurseries. I think it is because the PAC NW is very hip-py :slight_smile:

Personally, something with the simple 5 petal form that’s pink with a primrose touch would be nice. Something that had clusters of fruitful hips at an easy harvest level would be useful. I do not think that the hips needs to be specifically large but they should be big enough/abundant enough to merit human effort.

I can see why Rosa dumalis was the choice here. The canina family has a nice family trait where they like to bloom in orderly clusters, much like some of the synstylae but of an uneven arangement with bigger and fewer blooms/hips. They also tend to stick up and out at a 45 degree angle, which is nice for people.

I originally intended to go with Rosa rugosa but I think its a bit too nasty and difficult to work with in terms of genetics, its thorniess and difficulty beyond f1 mixed ploidy. The largest hipped rugosa is called Cherries Jubilee or Cherry Jubilee or something like that. Its sold at random specialty places.

Another thing to consider is hip skin. What would be optimal? So many variables, so little time :slight_smile:

I remember flats of R. pomifera at Sequoia. They could give them away.

Jim T, we must have been posting at the same time. I missed your response.

The article is interesting. I am unsure as to why they are not using the pure species of Rosa pomifera (villosa). I guess Mollis has different foliage and a lighter bloom. Theyre both downy-foliaged, large-hipped, stalky statured canina types though. Both are tetraploid (3+ 1, uneven canian types) but pomifera leans towards the Euro-Asian Cinn. side and Mollis leans towards the North American Cinn. side. Theyre both unusual for canina types because they lean the most heavilty towards similarity to the Asian Cinns. (like R. rugosa). The diploid (Asian) version of R. acicularis nipponensis could prove to be a potent combination. A few tetraploid Cinn. species are even on both sides, such as R. acicularis nipponensis, R. hawrana, R. laxa, R. pendulina, Likewise, some diploid Cinn. are homogenous in their traits, so maybe they could be useful in hybridity as male parents only. Examples: R. beggeriana, R. blanda, R. cinnamonea, R. corymbulosa, R. davurica, R. elegantula, R. fendleri, R. foliosa, R. giraldi, R. johnstonii, R. maretii, R. paulstruis, R. persetosa, R. pisocarpa and R. woodsii. I am surprised that R. gymnocarpa is not in the above group. Keep in mind this old theory but some of it may be useful nonetheless.

Roses like Amy, Therese Bugnet, Golden Unicorn, other Buck types, etc. could be potentially useful. The thing with the canina types is that they can dramatically changed, do jack at all or be rendered genetically confused with any combination. Sometimes the changes can be useful and sometimes (like a large loss of hardiness) theyre damaging.

This was especially interesting:

“In Rosa spinosissima, contents of anthocyanins (Acy content) in the rose hip is an important trait. Anthocyanins belong to the flavonoids, which is a group of polyphenolic compounds. The flavonoids are reported to have a wide range of biological effects, e.g. anti-bacterial and anti-inflammatory activity (Cook & Samman, 1996).”

I used vitamin C that was gluten-free, etc, from a rose hip source and it made me feel like hell on earth (I have some nasty disorders like fibro, celiacs, lol). It certainly wasnt anti-inflammatory on me but I’d love to see it on someone with a normal immune/nervous system.

Rosa rubiginosa didnt seem useful for the study. I find it difficult to work with personally. Also, its really thorny, has fewer hips and has the least want to cluster its blooms. Rosa canina itself seems better in all regards except hardiness and scented foliage. Its blooms are also bigger. They stated that they got better germination in year 2 but my experience was fine with year 1 germinations. I would avoid using Rosa rubiginosa for purposes of agriculture.

The hybridity charts are a little muddled to me right now because Im really tired but it seems like the maternal parent has more sway, which has been my experience. I have continuously used the hybrid parents in my work as the male despite the likelihood of failure. Maybe I will have them root tested some day but I am sure their ploidy is varied. Working with this entire family is roulette no matter what you do anyways.

Yeah, Robert, I imagine. I think it is because Oregon (WA too I think) has become such a DIY/Fair hybrid locale. I actually find it kind of nice even if a lot of the people’s work is inefficient or cost-deficient. The human factor speaks volumes, I believe.

I found some interesting lit on the Vitamin C content of hips. They are sort of like grapes: grown lean, in tough conditions, they have the highest Vitamin C content. The claim is that the further north or the higher the altitude, the higher the Vitamin C content per 100g. This is true within a single species.

Hips for consumption need to have two very important characteristics: the hairs need to be easily removable and the flavor must be good. Canina actually makes very tasty hips. When dry, if cut open, the hairy innards and the seeds just drop out. A whole batch needs just a bit of shaking to remove most of the itching powder.

I’m a big fan of rose hip preserves and rose hip tea. Since I’m pressed for time, I order them online from Turkish food specialty stores or I drink Red Zinger. I’m addicted.

haha, thats awesome, Cass. I am probably food intolerant but I do wish the local organic chain up here called New Seasons carried rarities like pine tea or something along those lines. I really do believe there is a market, albeit a slow growing one, for natural diversity in our diets.

I intend to look at various diploid species in terms of the hip mechanics. I am wondering how useful roses like Rosa blanda, etc. would be. I am also curious about modern tetraploid like Applejack. One aspect that is interesting is that the majority of the Caninae clan can grow in harsh climates (cold and heat) in rather rocky soils. There are a lot of northern crop lands that could benefit from more gross value per square inch in terms of crop types. It makes me believe that the possibility exists – even if in thought. As we all know, practice is where it counts but Europe seems to be attempting it. Its really awesome to see, imo. It was kind of cool to read a paper from the Scandinavian locale, which is my total ancestory. The flow of the language in english is not too much different from the flow of the language from the midwest. It was kind of cool :slight_smile:

I really enjoy reading this because my first cross in 1988 was done with one thought in mind, to improve hip size and quality. That cross was rugosa x palustris and I had visions of apple-sized hips - because of a section of a book I’d read about the domestication of apples, where it showed large apples appearing in the F2 of two smaller sized crabapples species. Well… unfortunately the mealiness and small size of palustris hips dominated the F1 and the F2 as well, so I never did get that delicious apple-sized hip of my dreams. But even after all these years I still am drawn to the idea of rose hip improvement.

Shane, one of the most tasty species I’ve come across so far would be Rosa xanthina. There wasn’t much flesh there, but what little there was, was sweet and juicy. I vaguely remember the purple/black hips of Rosa spinosissima being very similar in quality.

Canary Bird, a R. xanthina hybrid, seemed to have a lot of the red bark that the articles implied correlated with a lot of the high positive nutrient/flavor concentrations with anthocyanins in hips.

Sorry for any confusion, but the photos of R. xanthina on HMF looked a lot like Rosa primula so I used the pics of Canary Bird instead so that I was sure.

According to Eugster, rose hips have primarily lycopene and beta-carotene for carotenoids. The nearly black hips of spinosissima have almost pure chrysanthemin for the anthocyanin component which is interesting given that the color of chrysanthemin is pink.

There is really a big difference in hip flavors, much to my surprise. But I shoulda known, like apples/crabapples.

Chuckles is not bad, a whole lot better than my cross of Golden Arctic (M) x Carefree Beauty (F), or the pink single abundantly hip covered but leafless shrub growing at a nearby apartment complex. Chuckles is quite a nice bush too and with a decent crop of hips. But the canes are wicked. Too late in the year to find many more to taste.

Be careful, some of these may have been sprayed with chemicals by others.

Yeah, that is why I never used systemics on my roses. It is asking for trouble! “Go go gadget liver!” only works in cartoons designed for alcoholics =/

Don, maybe the chemical works like pepto. It goes down pink… but… lol.

I am kidding but I do believe that like pepto + gastric process, that something can transform. If I knew more, I’d try to help further.

I’d love to see a diploid persian briar type hybridized with a diploid american cinnamonae type to see how the hips/nutrients/chemicals come out. It could possibly be helpful. I wish Rosa primula wasnt a total genetic nightmare.

I had also wondered how the Indica tribe panned out in hip context. I noticed that many of them usually have few but large seeds (Im disregarding Banksia types) that have thick hips walls with very little flesh. I do not recall any of that painful fiber matieral in them. I almost wonder if this clan of roses was designed for the hip to both decay and float/travel when water was abundant. I wonder if the close-origin synstylae types were more for the birds since the hips are more decay-prone and the seeds are so abundant/minute. I do not recall much in the way of the painful fiber in either clan but I am basing this on random memories. Anyways, food for thought… literally :slight_smile: Let me know what you all think.

I almost think it’d be worthwhile to make a propriety seedling based on multiple diploid family representatives solely bred for the purpose of hip/cluster traits. The main problem, I am guessing, is that compounding, unrelated species tend to lose health rapidly when layered that deep on a genetic level. Meh =(

In south eastern asia Rosa gigantea large hips are sold at markets for human comsumption (maturity stage?) and as they fall on ground are pig and other big mammals eaten. Synstilae red fruits are bird eaten when softening.

Direct F1s from species are rather uniform and often as healthy as parents. Little to select here. F2 and crosses from different parentage hybrids diverge a lot. Some not as good as parents, some better. As modern roses are from for centuries selective breeding, it is no wonder species crosses are no more than Chinas level flower sophistication. Oppositely plant qualities of the best ones such as vigor and resistance are allways a lot better. Close to species to better as selected for our decorative aims.