Rhubarb, a forgotten medicine?

When you think of rhubarb, what comes to mind? I’ll start: Strawberry Rhubarb Pie. Since I’ve ever been aware of rhubarb as a plant, I’ve thought of it as something that goes in pies. I’m willing to bet I’m not alone. Rhubarb, being as it is a spring vegetable (yes, it’s actually a vegetable, not a fruit), is something I use mostly in the spring and early summer in desserts.

But surely rhubarb wasn’t always just a pie vegetable, destined only for desserts. Where did rhubarb come from? How was it discovered that its leaves weren’t edible but it’s stalks were?

Like most plants, rhubarb has a curious history. One that’s much longer than we could’ve supposed, and one that reveals properties of the plant you may never have heard of.

Rhubarb, the Medicine

The Divine Farmer, a Chinese legend. Image from Public Domain Review.

The beginnings of rhubarb are more interesting than the plant itself, or the fact that its leaves are poisonous.

The first accounts of rhubarb can be found in a text known as The Divine Farmer’s Herb-Root Classic (or Shennong Bencaojing), a Chinese text on medicinal plants, therapeutic substances, and agriculture thought to have been published in the first or second centuries AD. Sadly, the text no longer exists, but it firmly established what they called “the great yellow”, rhubarb, as none other than a laxative.

Rhubarb is a strikingly beautiful plant with its enormous green leaves and slender red, pink, corral, and yellow stalks. It is also fairly simple to grow, and a number of varieties now exist of the plant (at least 60, though there’s a high possibility of there being more). Curiously, not all of these modern varieties are as effective as laxatives as others, a sign of what was to become of the plant in its future.

Nevertheless, the effectiveness of rhubarb as a medicine for stomach troubles that it eventually made its way to the Mediterranean. Both the ancient Greeks and Romans used it as a remedy to purge one’s system, a common practice in ancient medicine. The Latins in fact provided the word ‘rhubarb’: ‘rhubarb’ stems from the Latin ‘rha barbarum’ — a term denoting that the plant came from barbaric lands across the Rha river.

But it wasn’t until the 11th or 12th centuries, when the Islamic empire was at its peak, that the plant gained extreme popularity and traveled more widely across the Mediterranean, Asia, and Europe. Carried over first via the Silk Road, the plant traveled to modern-day Turkish ports, and from there it spread to the rest of Europe, where it eventually made its way further north, to the British Isles, and to America.

The stalks are the only edible portion of the plant. Though they can be consumed raw, they’re also quite tart and almost unpalatable for some. The tartness becomes delightfully sweet once mixed with sugar (again, why it makes for a great dessert vegetable).

The leaves, though enormous and beautiful in their own right, are high in oxalic acid, which is poisonous to consume in such high doses. Other vegetables like spinach, broccoli, Brussel sprouts, and even cauliflower also contain oxalic acid, but in lower, less lethal quantities. One would still need to consume several rhubarb leaves in order to feel the negative effects, but even so, they’re best avoided. During WWI, the British learned this the hard way when the government, due to food shortages, suggested eating rhubarb leaves, causing cases of poisoning and death.

Today, rhubarb is grown around the world, but is most popular in the United Kingdom, northern European countries, and in the northwestern states in America (Washington and Oregon especially).

Culinary Uses and Strawberry Rhubarb Pie

No conversation about rhubarb would be complete without mentioning one of this world’s most famous desserts. So well-known is this pie, that it overshadows the plant’s earlier uses.

Though surely the plant had been prepared in meals before, no records exist of rhubarb’s culinary uses before the 19th century. By then, the price of sugar had decreased dramatically, and a wider supply of medicinal plants was available, lessening the marketability of rhubarb as a medicine, while also allowing for experimentation of rhubarb in cooking. Particularly when mixed with sugar, the tartness of rhubarb’s stalks married perfectly to create a deliciously sweet dessert that people loved. In Great Britain especially, rhubarb was popular in pies and pastries, as well as dessert wines and compotes.

By the 19th century, rhubarb’s popularity as a food was such that its former status as a medicine had waned considerably. In America, rhubarb became known as the ‘pie fruit’. (Though Benjamin Franklin is credit with bringing rhubarb seeds to America and using the plant as a medicine, most American uses of rhubarb are in fact, culinary). In New England for example, rhubarb was plentiful and became a staple food. When sweeter varieties were formed (one variety was called ‘Victoria rhubarb’ in honor of Queen Victoria’s coronation), this made the vegetable all the more attractive to use in desserts.

It was also in America where rhubarb was mixed with strawberries, creating the infamous strawberry rhubarb pie we know and love today. Given they enter the supermarket around the same time, the sweetness of the strawberries married well with the tartness of rhubarb stalks, creating an even more delectable dessert that became uniquely American.

Such was the love for this vegetable in pies, and its use as a fruit, that American farmers in the 1940’s actually gained the right to have rhubarb classified as a fruit.

How else can we use rhubarb?

Just because it’s a great dessert plant doesn’t mean that’s the only way to consume rhubarb. In fact, the more we learn about rhubarb’s properties, the more reason we have to consume it more frequently, and via a plethora of alternative methods.

Unsurprisingly, given its history as a laxative, one of the biggest properties of rhubarb is its high fiber content. What’s more, it also has a high tannin content, which means it also has anti-diarrheal properties. While rhubarb could still be considered an herbal remedy for constipation (it is sometimes sold in powdered form at natural food stores), these two properties together mean it should only be used as a temporary solution, with the guidance of a qualified doctor.

Rhubarb also has several other properties that are less well-known, but no less important. Being high in antioxidants, rhubarb is great for fighting inflammation. While this is great for our internal systems, it can also be useful externally. Rhubarb is an especially attractive ingredient in skincare products.

Finally, rhubarb leaves do in fact, have some use, and that is to act as a natural insecticide. When mixed with dish soap and sprayed on plants for instance, caterpillars and other leaf-eating insects will leave the plant alone (turns out they don’t like it either!).

Conclusions

All of this is to say, rhubarb is rather a stunning plant. And though we no longer view it as a medicine, there’s no reason not to forget it’s medicinal qualities when we prepare it in food. In fact, rhubarb is a terrific reminder that food can both satisfy and cure. The more we understand how plants can be incorporated in our lives beyond food, the richer our lives become.