Not only are the modest but beautiful flowers of the wild rose, so unjustly called Rosa canina or ‘dog rose’, a pleasure to behold, but the fruit too is delightful as it splashes its bright red across the autumn landscape. Where the hips have not been harvested they look, in winter, like little red gnomes with white caps of snow, and many a hungry bird has enjoyed these nutritious berries when everything else has been buried under the ice.
As a food, rose hips are excellent for many reasons. The fully-ripe hips contain natural fruit sugar and taste as sweet as any jam. They are nourishing because of their many mineral salts, such as calcium, silica, magnesium and phosphorus. Incidentally, phosphorus is good for the brain and no doubt our little feathered friends have to use theirs, dashing about in the winter weather, and who knows whether the phosphorus in rose hips is responsible for their feathers being always so bright and shiny.
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