Wild Rose Medicine and Foraging Tips
- Flora Farm
- Jun 1
- 3 min read
The yin to summers yang.
It’s no coincidence that the wild rose flowers in full force around early summer.
Rose is the yin to summers yang, preparing us to balance internal and external conditions of excess heat and inflammation.
Rose soothes nervous system responses that are overwhelmed, frazzled and frayed. It eases the burdens of expectations and encourages honesty in our personal need for rest, re-cooperation and general enjoyment. Rose helps to reconcile the layers of our selves that push, force or become impatient for things to get done, preserving our integrity and receptivity while external influences are stimulated.
Rose understands tension and how tension patterns are created and held within the body. Whether it’s being held in the musculoskeletal system, intestines, uterus or cardiovascular system, roses antispasmodic properties ease and reflect the underlying influences of these patterns with compassionate insistence. What are we holding on to or unable to forgive that’s hindering our ability to relax?
It’s not about how hard we can push but how softly we can let it go.
Strongly toning and fortifying in nature, rose eases the burden on the cardiovascular and circulatory system by restoring structure and function to blood vessels. This optimizes blood flow through veins which ameliorates conditions like high blood pressure and varicose veins. It has the same effect on the tissue that lines the digestive system and reinstates the integrity and boundary of it’s lining that may have been compromised in conditions like “leaky gut”.
Rose is that soft and welcome breeze that blows through on a hot summer’s day. It's astringent and toning qualities cool off heated, irritated and inflamed tissue that show up in skin conditions like sun burns, acne, eczema and rashes. Utilized in first aid, beauty and skin care for thousands of years, rose is friendly to all manner of skin types and can be used daily to keep the skin firm and radiant.
With a correspondence to the planet Venus, rose unlocks language and creative channels that attract people and experiences that harmonize, support and bring beauty into our life. It shines a new light on our emotional reality, strengthening a broken or sad heart burdened with grief so we open up to new possibilities of expressing emotions so that they no longer lay so heavily on our hearts
Foraging Tips:
🌸Harvest just the petals, they fall off willingly with a gentle hand! By harvesting just the petals, you leave the hip of the rose to continue to ripen so you can harvest the rose hips in the fall/winter or leave them for wildlife who need the nourishment in the lean months.
🌸Avoid harvesting from rose brambles that are on the side of roads or under power lines. These places accumulate a lot of toxins and are often sprayed with glyphosates.
🌸Sunshine brings out the aromatics in the rose petals. Wait a while for morning dew to evaporate and try and time the harvest when there hasn't been any rain for a bit.
🌸The medicinal quality of the wild rose is unmatched by any cultivated variety. Each flower of the wild rose holds only 5 petals, harvesting these beauties is a labor of love and patience but is always worth the effort! If you are wanting to bulk up your harvest a bit, you can harvest some of the leaves of the rose to add to your basket as well. The leaves are extremely astringent and will affect the taste of your teas as well as make infused oils a dramatically darker color.
The wild rose harvest is one that I look forward to every year, it feels like going to visit that sweet friend that always has the kettle on and wise words to share.
The wild rose is always the last ingredient necessary to complete the Summer Share for the Flora Farm CSA. The hydrosol and essential oil distillation that comes from this harvest is incredible and we add the petals to our sumptuous summer tea blends and soothing wild rose lotion bars.
Summer CSA's are are always ready for local pick up and to be shipped out around the Summer Solstice.
Check out our Community Supported Agriculture program and it's Summer Share, or browse our herbal medicine and farm goods page to explore our rose inspired hydrosol and essential oils and skin care bundles!
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