10:28AM, 11/4/2009 Rose Hips Heart

Occasionally, I’ll mosey over to Wikipedia to gather a little information about something I’ve recently shot and then grab a couple of key words and search for more reliable information. Today’s results were more amusing than usual.

Hmmmm. Fact or Wikipedia fiction? “Rose hips have recently become popular as a healthy treat for pet chinchillas. Chinchillas are unable to manufacture their own Vitamin C, but lack the proper internal organs to process many vitamin-C rich foods. Rose hips provide a sugarless, safe way to increase the Vitamin C intake of chinchillas and guinea pigs.” Now, is that so the chinchillas will make nice shiny fur coats?

Continuing on, “Rose hips are also fed to horses. The dried and powdered form can be fed at a maximum of 1 tablespoon per day to improve coat condition and new hoof growth.” Okay, maybe that’s plausible, but why the dosage? So we do it right?

And then it goes on, “The fine hairs found inside rose hips are used as itching powder” Itching powder? What? No reference to whoopee cushions? And finally, this: “Rose hips can be used to make Palinka, a traditional Hungarian alcoholic beverage.” That’s a traditional fruit brandy produced in Transylvania (no references or links to either, True Blood, The Vampire Dairies or Twilight). Nice, but I looked that up in Wikipedia and there’s no mention of rose hips.

I didn’t search elsewhere today, this was too much fun. Gotta love Wikipedia.

Anyway, we’re deep into fall and this capture was a pleasant surprise. There’s something about that long, bare green stem in the foreground that makes this work. Maybe because it looks like that big vein that real hearts have.