Re: Growing Roses for Hips

Linda Starr wrote:

> Does anyone know of some rose varieties to grow for their hips?  I
> would like to utilize them for their winter interest and also for a
> tea for vitamin C intake.  I have planted two small one gallon roses,
> Rosa californica and Rose woodsii,  which I purchased from a native
> plant nursery but I have not seen them with fruit - so I don't know
> if they will produce good hips.  My climate here in the summer is
> very hot and dry with some wind every afternoon.

One rose which has lovely big hips (and also grows very easily from them is R.rugosa. The species itself is nice and it also has a lot of most attractive varieties both single and semi-double almost all of which also bear viable hips from which if you like to try they grow very easily (Roseraie de l'Hay is one exception which seldom produces even one hip in a season). True rugosas are very tough customers with beautiful healthy disease-restant foliage and certainly will stand a lot of dry summer wind. A couple of the clear pink hybrids however, which must have some hybrid tea blood (Conrad F Meyer and Sarah Van Fleet), have unfortunately inherited a tendency to severe rust attacks..

Rugosas grow very well in almost any part of NZ and seem not to mind whatever climate they land in, so I should think they would also grow happily for you.

Moira

--
Tony & Moira Ryan,
Wainuiomata, North Island, NZ.     Pictures of our garden at:-
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/cherie1/Garden/TonyandMoira/index.htm
NEW PICTURES ADDED 4/Feb/2004

Other Mailing lists | Author Index | Date Index | Subject Index | Thread Index