Bathe yourself in roses

We are currently studying wild roses at HerbMentor.com. The wild roses where I live are just starting to bloom and I can hardly wait to harvest petals to make vinegars, tinctures, elixirs and even rose water. The following article was written for HerbMentor.com as part of our Wild Rose plant studies.








Wild Rose
Botanical name: Rosa spp.
Family: Rosaceae (Rose)
Parts used: petals, inner bark, leaves, fruit
Properties: cool/dry, astringent, anodyne, nervine, aphrodisiac, anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, mood elevator




The exotic beauty and alluring smell of roses has enthralled humans for thousands of years. Roses have been found entombed with the ancient Egyptian pharaohs and were highly prized by the Greeks and Romans. The Chinese started cultivating roses around 5,000 years ago and in the late 18th century these roses spread to Europe where they were further hybridized.


Josephine, Napoleon's wife, adored roses and strived to grow every known rose species in her gardens outside of Paris. Many credit her for the popularity of roses today. In the late 18th century Europe the rose was so highly valued it was used as a type of currency.

Wild roses are found growing north of the equator. There are an estimated 35 indigenous species in North America and historical records show they have been used for food, medicine, and tools by the first peoples of North America. The Okanogan of the inland Cascades in WA state ate the flower buds but not the hips and used the thorns for fish hooks. The Athabascan reportedly placed the thorns in the center of warts, which were said to disappear within a few days. All interior Salish used the baldhip rose species widely for medicinal and spiritual purposes.


In the modern world there are books and even whole social organizations dedicated to roses. They are grown all over the world and given as gifts as a sign of love and friendship. If they only offered us beauty it would be enough but these tenacious plants offer us food and medicine as well as lessons on protection and boundaries.

The Wild Rose is my most important plant ally, and one that I am continually amazed by. If there is a single plant who has provided me with the most healing, it is this one. My relationship with this thorny beauty deepens each year, and every season the briar teaches me more about boundaries, vulnerability and self-expression. This plant teaches raw, wide open love complete with scars, thorns and an abiding sense of self-knowledge. She teaches that beauty is a bone deep quality, one that we hold in every cell regardless of the pain we’ve lived through or the battles we’ve weathered. In hard years, her petals unfurl skewed and wrinkled but this doesn’t mar her attractiveness. Rather, they add to an already complex character and give her more of the strongly scented medicine she’s known for.

Kiva Rose, herbalist


Roses as medicine
Roses have been used for medicine for thousands of years. We are currently experiencing the time of the rose revolution. Leading the rose cry is herbalist Kiva Rose who writes long romantic monographs about the many uses of wild roses.


She writes from experience that rose can be used in a myriad of ways, including:
wound healing
as a liver relaxant
pelvic decongestant
for hyper-immunity (allergies are an example)
as a relaxing nervine and nerve strengthener
for digestive complaints
muscle pain and uterine cramps
sunburns
bug bites
rashes


After reading her articles you wonder if there is anything that roses can’t do!


Simply put roses excel at cooling and soothing. I’ve personally seen it work wonders on muscle pain, wounds, and bug bites.


When using roses for medicine I like to use all the parts. When the wild roses are blooming I harvest the petals, the rose buds, leaves and twigs. All of these can be dried or extracted into alcohol.


Roses as food
The most common way that roses are used as food is by eating the fruit of the rose often called the rose hip. The hips are high in a multitude of nutrients, most famously vitamin C. Rose hips were our featured herb in December of 2007 and you can read more about them here.


Rose petals are also a fun way to eat roses. Like rose hips they are high in nutrients and especially high in polyphenols, an important antioxidant. Fresh rose petals can be made into jams, wines, honeys, vinegars, sprinkled on salads, and enjoyed in tea.


Now I know at this point some of you are wondering, “But if I don’t have wild roses, can I use the roses in my front yard?”

You certainly can use domesticated roses. First, you want to be sure that they haven’t been sprayed with harmful chemicals. Secondly, your best bet is to use roses that are aromatic. Roses that have no smell may not be as good for medicine or food, so use your nose to find the best roses.


And if possible search out your local wild rose. They like to live in moist habitats and usually grow in dense thickets. This can be along rivers, irrigation ditches, and riparian areas.


Wild roses have five petals, five sepals, and multiple stamens.





Roses are famous for their prickly thorns but technically they aren’t thorns but prickles. True thorns are modified stems that always originate at a node. Prickles are growths on the epidermis or the outer layer of the stem. All wild roses have prickles and sometimes the placement of them can lead to identification of a particular species. As for me, I’ll probably keep referring to rose thorns, something about the word prickles just isn’t the same.





The leaves form leaflets that have an opposite growth pattern and serrated edges.





This month there are so many ways that you can experience roses.


If you are able to work with fresh petals try making a honey, have some in a tea, infuse them in vinegar, or even tincture them or create an elixir.


If you are unable to work with fresh rose petals you can buy rose buds and powdered roses at Mountain Rose Herbs. The powdered roses are great for making pastilles for sore throats or you can use it in a variety of cosmetic products like facial scrub. I love dried rose petals and rose buds in my tea.


Here's a video showing how to make your own rose petal water.