It's that time of year when the trees are shedding their colourful autumn leaves and the landscape starts to look bare.
But if you take a closer look you'll see tiny flashes of colour as you pass by.
Dotted along the hedgerows are tiny Rosehips, with their oval shape and bright scarlet colour.
The most common you'll come across are the fruit of the wild (or more commonly Dog) Rose (Rosa Canina), but you may also find the Rosa Rugosa fruit, which are more round and bulbous in shape and more common in cultivated gardens.
Now even as a small child when the rose hips were spotted, my friends and I were filled with glee; we gathered all we could carry and proceeded to spend hours tearing them and shoving down the backs of each others school shirts. The fruits contain tiny hairs which make up nature's own itching powder, great for childhood pranks not so good for ingesting and therefore care must be taken in their preparation for consumption.
It's sad that while blackberries are greedily plucked from their bushes by many, the lonely rosehip remains on its stem to rot away unused.
It is such a waste.
These tough little fruits contain vitamins A, C and K, plus the B vitamins thiamin, riboflavin and niacin.
In fact their vitamin C content is said to be four times that of blackcurrants and up to twenty times that of oranges (and they don't need to be shipped halfway round the world to be enjoyed).
It wasn't always this way, during World War II, when German submarines were sinking many commercial ships; citrus fruits were difficult to import.
The British public were encouraged through pamphlets produced by Claire Loewenfeld, a dietitian working for Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children, to gather wild-grown rose hips and to make a Vitamin C syrup for children. There were articles in the British Medical Journal and letters to The Times Newspaper, with the same advice.English children were paid 3d per lb for rosehips harvested in the autumn to be made into rosehip syrup by the company Delrosa in Wallsend (near Newcastle).
In our house we are always trying to avoid getting coughs and colds when the cold weather sets in so instead of buying more oranges, or taking multivitamin tablet, we go down to nature's pharmacy and pick up some rosehips to make our own vitamin C boosting syrup.
Rosehips are best picked after the first frost, but don't leave it too late or they'll become a little waterlogged and will begin to rot, you really want to pick them by the first weekend in November (they produce fruit from late August, so there's plenty of time for gathering).
I have two recipes that I use to make the syrup, usually making at least one batch of each to last until the next rosehips grow.
The first recipe is from one of my favourite books, Grow Your Own Drugs by James Wong.
I make several quantities of this recipe.
250g fresh rosehips
5 cloves (optional)
1 cinnamon stick (optional)
500ml water
Approx 125g sugar
1. Crush the rosehips slightly and place into a pan. Add the cloves and cinnamon stick if using, then add the water. Simmer, uncovered for about twenty minutes.
2. Strain then add the smae ammount of sugar as there is liquid (approx 125g). Stir until disolved and bring to the boil, then simmer for ten minutes. Cool and filter through a muslin, before pouring into a small sterilised bottle.
Another good recipe for Rosehip syrup is featured on the Eat Weeds website.
1kg rosehips
3 litres of water
500g dark brown soft sugar (I've used ordinary granulated sugar and it worked just as well)
1.Bring to the boil 2 litres of water
2. Chop rosehips in food processor until mashed up, then add to boiling water.
3. Bring water back to the boil, then remove from heat and allow to steep for 20 minutes.
4. Pour rosehips and liquid into a scalded jelly bag and allow the juice to drip through. Gently squeeze the jelly bag to extract as much liquid as possible. Be careful not to rip the bag.
5. Add rosehip pulp back to a saucepan containing 1 litre of water and bring back to the boil. Then remove from heat and allow the contents to steep for another 20 minutes before straining through the jelly bag as in Step 3.
6. Add sugar to the strained rosehip liquid and dissolve, allow to simmer for five minutes, then pour into hot, sterilised bottles.
Makes: Approximately 2 litres
(For both recipes)
USE: For children, give 2 tsp per day, dilute one part syrup to 5 parts water and drink as a cordial (we like to use sparkling water as a treat); or use instead of maple syrup on pancakes, ice-cream, waffles or rice pudding.
STORAGE: Keeps for 1 week in the fridge once opened. Unopened, keeps for upto a year.
I love the tropical fruit like flavour that rosehips have and it's a winner with the kids.
Don't let these amazing fruits go to waste - get out there picking and make yourself a winter pick-me-up !
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