Rosehips

Rosehips are the fruits of the dog roses that grow in our hedges and edges and in the old filled-in pond at the end of Lambrok Meadow.

The roses (Rosa canina) are pink and very fragrant. They flower in June and the hips ripen in the late summer and autumn, a splash of bright red as the days get darker and colder.

The sweet outer layer of the fruit is there to attract birds and small mammals, which carry the seeds away from the parent plant. The seeds inside the hip are hairy and act as an irritant, one of many devices that plants use to hurry their seeds through a browser’s stomach before the fierce digestive juices can damage them.

Unusually, our dog rose seeds, after the dangers of their journey through some creature’s gut, need two full winter’s worth of chill before they will germinate. So if you are planning to grow Rosa canina from seed collected in the reserve’s hedges, you might need to keep them in your fridge for quite a while.

Finally, when FoSCP were children, a long, long time ago for many of us, we used to call rosehips’ irritating hairy seeds itching powder and we put them down inside the collar of the poor child sitting at the desk in front and then watched them squirm. Those were the days!