Organic rosehip powder — the whole dried fruit of the wild rose, milled fine. Tart, faintly floral, and a natural source of vitamin C.
What a rosehip is
The fruit of the rose. After the flower drops its petals, what swells behind it is the hip — usually from Rosa canina, the dog rose, which grows in hedgerows across Europe including here in Portugal. They ripen scarlet in autumn, after the first frosts, and they are one of the oldest wild foods on the continent.
The best-known chapter in their history is Britain during the Second World War, when citrus imports stopped and the Ministry of Health organised schoolchildren to collect rosehips from hedgerows by the ton. They were made into a syrup and distributed to children as a vitamin C source. It worked, and the reason it worked is that rosehips genuinely are one of the richest sources in the European flora.
Never harvest your own — and this is why
Inside a rosehip, packed around the seeds, is a mass of fine stiff hairs. Those hairs are a mechanical irritant, and they are what school-yard itching powder was traditionally made from. Swallowed, they irritate the gut; on skin, they itch for hours.
Commercially milled rosehip powder is processed to deal with them — either the seeds and hairs are removed first, or the whole hip is milled fine enough that they are no longer intact. That processing is exactly what you are paying for. Picking hips from a hedge and blitzing them at home is a genuinely bad idea.
Vitamin C — what can and cannot be said
Rosehips are a real natural source of vitamin C, and depending on the variety, the ripeness and how they were dried, the content varies considerably.
Where a product supplies at least 15% of the reference intake per serving, the authorised vitamin C claims apply: vitamin C contributes to the normal function of the immune system, to normal collagen formation for skin, bones, cartilage, gums and teeth, to the reduction of tiredness and fatigue, to the protection of cells from oxidative stress, and it increases iron absorption. Check the nutrition panel on your pack for the declared figure per serving; we are not going to state a number we cannot verify for your batch.
What is not authorised: anything about joints. You may have read about rosehip and joint comfort, and about a galactolipid called GOPO. There is published work on it. EFSA has authorised no health claim for rosehip in relation to joints or inflammation, so no shop in Europe may tell you it helps, and we will not.
The rule that matters: keep it cold
Do not brew it as a hot tea if vitamin C is your reason for buying it. Vitamin C is destroyed by heat, and pouring boiling water over rosehip powder undoes most of the point. Rosehip tea is a perfectly nice drink; it is simply not a vitamin C drink.
Use it cold:
- A teaspoon in a smoothie, where the tartness works well with banana, apple or berries
- Stirred into yoghurt, kefir or overnight oats
- Whisked into cold water with a little honey — a sharp, fruity drink
- With an iron-rich meal, to take advantage of the vitamin C
It is naturally quite fibrous and slightly gritty. That is the whole fruit; it is not a fault.
Cautions
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Kidney stones. Rosehips contain oxalates, and vitamin C in excess converts partly to oxalate. If you have had calcium-oxalate stones, keep the quantity modest.
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Iron overload. Because vitamin C increases iron absorption, go carefully if you have haemochromatosis.
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Pregnancy. Culinary amounts are food; concentrated daily doses of any botanical are worth mentioning to your midwife.
Storage
Airtight, cool and dark, and in the fridge once opened if you can. Vitamin C oxidises in air and light, and rosehip powder that has faded from bright rust to dull brown has lost a good deal of it.
Dragon Superfoods
Smart Organic
Iswari
Iswari
