Cooper's Chronicles: Rose Hip

THE RAMBUNCTIOUS ROSE HIP
By Barry P.W. Cooper

The rose hip provides many benefits to mankind and children. It is one of nature's best sources of Vitamin C, it makes a wonderful, gentle, sweet cup of herb tea and the small, shiny berries are pleasing to the eye. It can be a joy to children because the small fibers on the inner shell of the rose hip make one of the finest itching powders known to man.

The rose hip is actually the fruit of the mature rose flower and starts out life as a small green berry which slowly ripens to a rich red-orange by autumn. It is, ounce for ounce, much richer in Vitamin C than oranges, and rose hips are common to all health food stores because they are also rich in Vitamins A, B, E and K.

There are many varieties of roses, but the rose hips found in most herbal teas are from the wild rose bushes grown in Chile, the rosa mosqueta. In Chile, the ideal combination of plentiful wild rose bushes and a large peasant population combine to make the collection and manufacture of rose hips a viable business.

The wild rose bushes are scattered about the countryside and are not the neat, tidy rose bushes you find in well manicured gardens. These bushes are well over eight feet in height with long, fiercely thorned stems. The rose flowers are very small, but the rose hips are bloated and luscious and hang in thick profusion, bending the wands toward the pickers.

The rose hips are harvested in a classical cottage-garden industry format in that families scour the countryside for the wild rose bush and then gather the berries with crude rakes by hand. The peasants wear thick leather gloves to protect themselves from the barbs as they scrape the rose hips off the bushes. When a sufficient quantity has been harvested, the family takes their bounty to a local collector who in turn accumulates a truckload which is then sold in bulk to the processor.

The wild rose bushes are mainly found in the southern regions of Chile close to the towns of Chillan, Cabrero, Yumbel, Mulchen, Mininco, Angol and Los Sauces. The process for collection, manufacture and shipping are tied to the seasons. Harvesting begins in early March and is over by the end of April. The work is performed by peasants of all ages who are paid daily for the fresh fruit by the buying agents that act as supplier representatives for the processing plants.

Once the rose hips reach the processing plant, they are mechanically pre-cleaned to eliminate leaves, branches, etc. before being dried. The old-fashioned way of drying the fresh fruit was to spread the rose hips out on a hard, flat surface in the sun.

This method is still in use today among some processors, as it is very cost effective and the sun burns brightly and often in southern Chile. However, to standardize product quality as well as enhance processing speeds, artificial dehydration in drying chambers and tunnels is used among the more affluent plants. The fresh fruit is placed on trays where it is dried by gusts of hot air produced by fans and heat exchangers.

The rose hip is separated into four distinct product categories:

• Whole Dried Fruit: Refers to the dehydrated fruit that is later cleaned but not ground. It is primarily used for aromatic adornments and potpourri.
  
  
• Shell: This product is obtained by crushing the whole dried fruit and mechanically eliminating its impurities. Shells are exported to Europe where they are used in "Fructatea" Ð a bulk blend of coarse cut herbs and flavors and other aromatic fruit mixtures. They are also used in instant soup and juices as well as in pharmaceutical extracts. It is the shells that are lined with the fine fibers that can cause children so much delight and adults so much anguish if they are used as itching powder.
  
  
• Fine Cut: This product results from the fine grinding of the clean shells. The "fine cut" rose hips are destined for the tea bag trade where their very dense nature is of great use to blenders. For instance, a conventional 20 foot container of black tea BOPF grade will weigh about 10 metric tons, whereas a 20 foot container of rose hips will weigh 18 metric tons.
  
  
• Seed: This is a by-product of the cleaning process and is primarily used in the concentrated animal feed industry.

The products are then packed in bulk sacks or paper bags, stuffed into containers at the plant and shipped down to Valparaiso, the famous Chilean port, for export around the world.

In conclusion, it is said that in ancient days groups were often sworn to silence with a bribe of roses. Thus, roses became symbolic of confidences. A rose hung in a room or over a table meant that all the information exchanged was to be kept secret. The expression sub rosa is literally interpreted as "under the rose" and means "in greatest confidence" so even the legal profession has gained from an association with this flower. However, there is nothing secret about the benefits that the rose brings to society. Its beauty and aroma grace our days and its fruit is one of the staples of the herb trade.