Hip hip hooray
They’re famed for syrups and schoolboy pranks – but glorious rosehips are great to gaze at, too
YOU could always tell when autumn had arrived when I was a boy, because all of the bright orange hips that festooned the dog roses in the hedgerows near my primary school would mysteriously disappear within a week of ripening.
Most of the adult population of the town probably thought they were taken to make rosehip syrup or had been eaten by ravenous birds. In fact, they were stripped from dangerously barbed branches by us kids, who would crack them open to use the hairy seeds inside as a source of free itching powder.
These days I prefer to simply admire the glossy, jewel-like fruit of our native dog rose (Rosa canina) while they smother its long, arching stems from early autumn until they start to shrivel in winter. The hips come hot on the heels of a midsummer display of pink or white sweetly scented single flowers.
The tiny, flask-shaped hips have an extremely high Vitamin C content, and a tonic made from their flesh was invented to keep colds at bay – rosehip syrup first became popular during the Second World War when the Ministry of Food published recipes for housewives to make the herbal remedy to give to their children.
Rosehip medicinal syrups, oils and tablets are still available, but the craze for foraging wild food has led to it also becoming a fashionable ingredient for jellies, jams and cordials. Swanky cocktail bars even serve drinks with a splash of rosehip syrup or liquor.
Apart from the instantly recognisable hedgerow varieties, rosehips come in many colours, shapes and sizes. Shades of red and orange are most common, but there are green, yellow, pink, dark purple and even black hips. Some are the size of tiny beads, others more than 1½in across.
The round, oval, elongated, bottle or pearshaped fruit are usually smooth-skinned, although a few are armed with prickly spines. They can be held in dense clusters, small groups or individually on stems, and are often crowned with the remnants of the sepals, the leafy growths that protect unopened buds.
Anyone who wants to see the sheer diversity of hips available should visit a garden famed for its roses, such as RHS Garden Rosemoor in Devon, Mottisfont Abbey in Hampshire or David Austin Roses in Shropshire. Make a note of your favourites, then snap up some container or bare-root specimens for planting this winter.
As a rule, most roses with single or semidouble flowers that allow easy access for pollinating insects will produce hips. Among the best are R. elegantula ‘Persetosa’, a vigorous shrub with tiny glistening red hips, and ‘Flora McIvor’ with her oval red hips. Rosa villosa ‘Duplex’ boasts pinky red, spine-covered hips that are dead ringers for puffer fish. Many climbing and rambling roses are festooned with hips. Rosa ‘Wedding Day’ boasts huge sprays of little scarlet hips, while ‘Madame Grégoire Staechelin’ has pinkish orange fruit that resemble small pears. Rosa ‘Pleine de Grâce’ and R. longicuspis var. sinowilsonii both carry clusters of pea-sized orange hips that usually last well into winter.
The best hips of all can be found on the spiny branches of Rosa pimpinellifolia, a small shrub commonly known as the Scots rose. In summer it has single white flowers but it comes into its own in autumn with fiery red foliage and large, jet-black fruit. ‘Falkland’, ‘Dunwich Rose’ and other closely related varieties have equally dark hips.
The prize for possessing the most bizarre hips must go to R. roxburghii, a shrub rose from China that was introduced to Britain in 1908. Round, green and heavily armed with spines, their appearance has led to their common name, chestnut rose.
Not all roses will produce an abundance of hips. Hybrid teas and those with elaborate double flowers or tightly packed petals are unlikely to put on a show, because their blooms don’t provide easy access to insects.