BEACH PLUMS & ROSE HIPS: BEAUTIFUL WILD FRUIT SPHERES TO LOVE NOW

Two exceptional wild fruits that peak now, in August, are extraordinarily beautiful juicy little spheres: Rose hips & beach plums. And you can forage for them for free! Check them out below.

ROSE HIPS

A rose hip is the fruit of the rose plant. Rose hips begin to form after successful pollination of flowers in spring or early summer, forming beautiful shiny orange spheres that ripen in late summer through autumn.

Roses are are often propagated from rose hips.

Rose hips are add an extraordinary tart flavor to everything from herbal teas, to jams, to wines, and more. They can also be eaten raw, like a berry.

Rose hips are commonly used as a herbal tea, often blended with hibiscus, and an oil is also extracted from the seeds. They can also be used to make jam, jelly, marmalade, and rose hip wine. Try rose hip soup, "nyponsoppa", in Sweden, or “pálinka,” the traditional Hungarian fruit brandy or “cockta,” the fruity-tasting national soft drink of Slovenia.

Rose hips are particularly high in vitamin C --  one of the richest plant sources available. They contain 50% more vitamin C than oranges, for example. They also contain the beta-carotene, lutein, zeaxanthin, and lycopene.

We love Greenhook Ginsmiths Beach Plum Gin Liqueur! Made with about 1 pound of beach plums per bottle, this extraordinarily unique gin is both fruity and dry.

Roughly a pound of beach plums is used in each bottle of this gin, only 1,800 bottles of which have ever been made.

Steven DeAngelo, master distiller at Greenhook Ginsmiths in Brooklyn, originally set out to make a handcrafted sloe gin, but then had the epiphany that beach plums would be even cooler.

Ginsmiths starts with traditional organic botanicals — Tuscan juniper berries, chamomile, elderflower, blue ginger, orris root, and Ceylon cinnamon. It is distilled in a custom-made, 300 liter copper alembic still, outfitted with a specially-designed mercury vacuum. The gin is distilled at 40℉ lower than most, resulting in a cleaner, more botanical taste.

Then, the whole beach plums, including the pits, are steeped in the distilled gin for about 7 months to yield a tart, sour cherry nose, with bittersweet fruit, spicy coriander, chamomile, and bitter almonds notes.

BEACH PLUMS 

The beach plum (Prunus maritima), is a species of wild plum that grows in the sand along the Atlantic Ocean, from Maine to Maryland.

The plums begin as white flowers, with large yellow anthers, in mid-May and June. Then they develop into spherical fruits, known as drupes, ripening in August through early September.

They range in color, including purple, red, blue, black, and yellow.

Beach plums are about the size of a cherry. They taste both tart and sweet, with a slightly bitter edge. They are close relatives to both sloe berries and damson plums. They have a have a high pit-to-flesh ratio.

Holly, of Yuba Botanicals makes a mean Beach Plum Gin Fizz! Check out her recipe here.

Read more about Beautiful Spheres in A Universe of Beautiful Spheres and Our Galaxies Are Blowing Giant Bubbles Now.

And check out more beautiful things happening now in BN Arts/Design, Nature/Science, Food/Drink, Place/Time, Mind/Body, and Soul/Impact Daily Fix posts.

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IMAGE CREDITS:

1. Image: by Meghan Hess. “Rosehips.”
2. Image: by B4bees .(2m views). “A Violet Rambling Rose With An Attached Rosehip.”
3. Image: by Veda Clark. “Rosehip Berries.”
4. Image: by Hedonistin. “Hagebutte.”
5. Image: by Robert Izumi. “Rosehips.”
6. Image: Courtesy of Greenhook Ginsmiths. “Beach Plum Gin Liqueur.”
7. Image: by Rusty Clark - On the Air M-F 8am-noon. “Beach Plum.” Lori Wilson Park, Cocoa Beach FL.
8. Image: by Melissa Rebelo. “Beach Plum. Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary.”
9. Image: by Putneypics. “Beach Plum in Bloom. Quissett.”
10. Image: by dreamponderCreate. “Beach Plum Tree Droppings.”
11. Image: by Joe Reynolds, of Nature of the Edge of NYC. “Flowering Beach Plums.”
12. Image: by matt.herzog. “Some Native Beach Plum.”
13. Image: Courtesy of Parker River Wildlife Refuge. “Beach Plums.”
14. Image: by The Tichnor Brothers Collection. Courtesy of Boston Public Library.  “Beach Plums, Cape Cod, Mass. Postcard.”
15. Image: by Holly of Yuba Botanicals. “Beach Plum Gin Fizz.”
16. Image: by Tim Green. “Rosehips.”
17. Image: by Alexander Lyubavin. “Rosehips.”
18. Image: by BN App - Download now!
19. Image: by Jay Collier. “Beach Plum.”