If you’re a certain age, you may have been given Rose Hip Syrup as a child. The bright red round and oval gems were used as a tonic to prevent winter colds because they’re rich in vitamin C. But did you also know they were baked in tarts, added to wine, marmalade and made into soup? Best of all, they were used as anti varicose vein tea!
Now, the only thing I’ve ever done with haws is mix them with crab apples to make jelly, what about you? Well apparently, since Roman times the cheerful sprays of berries have been picked not just for jellies and jams, but to make wine and as a cure for the headaches that drinking might have caused! Women also gathered them for dyeing their hair, I touched mine up yesterday, I wonder if it’s worth a try.
I’ve always fancied myself as a medicine woman, a curandera, perhaps in a previous life.
Lucid Gypsy 
Hawthorn berries are also a traditional treatment for heart conditions. Never thought to mix them with crab apples to make jelly. What an excellent idea. Thanks, Gilly.
That takes me back a bit! I remember eating haws them straight off the bushes on the way to school. It was the one thing that wasn’t forbidden me. I used to walk through paths lined with blackberries and raspberries (we didn’t call them wild, then, because nobody we knew would think of growing them in their garden) which I loved to eat but my mother was constantly worried about my stomach. She needn’t have, I have an enormous capacity for fresh fruit which never seems to cause me any harm. But hips, yes, Grandma made her own rose-hip syrup, and a tea (which I never had, it was for ‘grown-ups). I have a feeling that haws were fed to the horses when they had colic or something. It’s so far back in the memory I can’t quite recall it.
Goodness, that takes me back!!
This is all new to me. I wonder if we had Rose Hip Syrup in the U.S. ?? 🙂
We had cod liver oil with malt in my house. Funnily enough I actually liked it. I think rose hip syrup was too sweet and possibly too expensive.
about eight years ago – cod liver oil rescued my skin – one tablespoon a day helped me moisturize from inside out (and who know what else it did for immunity)
That was my mother’s remedy too and I liked the taste of malt but not cod liver oil
hair dye and hangover remedy – pretty cool stuff.
I have a bottle of rose hip essential oil on my shelf – think i will add it to something later – thx
Now you tell me! You mean I could have prevented these varicose veins? 🙂 🙂 I’m with Jude- bit sweet, but I never went the cod liver oil route either.
Useful little berries. Maybe if I’d had some it would e prevented my heart condition…
Good to learn about these berries!
I am of that certain age! We got a spoonful of rosehip syrup on porridge. That possibly mitigated both the sweetness and the dullness (as I thought then) of the porridge.
Not had the jelly for years but I have had it despite my ‘young’ age. Also had a sip of Rose Hip wine, only a sip as I wasn’t really convinced!