The Dog Rose, or Wild Rose.
Also see: The Dog Rose, or Wild Rose - The Damask Rose - The White Rose - The Red Rose
Cynosbatus, sive rosa sylvestris.
A common bush in our hedges. The stalks or stems are round, woody, and very prickly. The leaves are composed each of several smaller; these stand in pairs on a rib, with an odd one at the end; and they are small, oblong, of a bright glossy green colour, and regularly indented at the edges. The flowers are single, large, and very beautiful: there is something simple and elegant in their aspect that pleases many, more than all the double roses raised by culture. They are white, but with a blush of red, and very beautiful. The fruit that follows there is the common hip, red, oblong, and containing a great quantity of hairy seeds.
The fruit is the only part used; the pulp is separated from the skins and seeds, and beat up into a conserve with sugar; this is a pleasant medicine, and is of some efficacy against coughs.
Though this is the only part that is used, it is not the only that deserves to be. The flowers, gathered in the bud and dried, are an excellent astringent, made more powerful than the red roses that are commonly dried for this purpose. A tea, made strong of these dried buds, and some of them given with it twice a day in powder, is an excellent medicine for overflowings of the menses; it seldom fails to effect a cure. The seeds separated from the fruit, dried and powdered, work by urine, and are good against the gravel, but they do not work very powerfully.
Upon the branches of this shrub, there grow a kind of spungy fibrous tufts, of a green or redish colour, they are called bedeguar. They are caused by the wounds made by insects in the stalks, as the galls are produced upon the oak They are astringent, and may be given in powder against fluxes. They are said to work by urine, but experience does not warrant this.
