Question
I have several rosa rugosa in my front yard, eight miles northwest of Boston, where they are exposed in winter to salt and sand from my street. They look healthy and have doubled or tripled in size. I left the rose hips on the canes last fall so as to avoid late-season pruning. Should I cut them now? Do you have any other recommendations?

Answer
Those Rugosas are tough shrubs.  Workhorses of the Northeast shore, they are used by landscapers to stabilize beaches and coastline subject to erosion.

The hips of Rugosas are said to be the ne plus ultra fruit of any Rose.  If you have not sprayed or otherwise messed with chemicals, I think you should give some serious thought to Rose Hip Soup (http://www.dlc.fi/~marianna/gourmet/13_9.htm) or at least to drying them and sending them around to your friends for tea.

They will be ornamental punctuations up and down if you leave them on.  At this point, pruning seems unnecessary to me.  Someone else might disagree.  Beauty is after all in the eye of the beholder.  These just happen to be one of the selling points of the Rugosa Rose, those vivid red hips.

Any further energy spent on seed production I expect would be negligible.  Seed production is the main point of pruning.  Save your shears.  Unless you need some for that soup!

Thanks for writing.