June 19, 2026 • 10 mins
We know rhubarb as a tart fruit that looks like pink celery, but it also has a bulbous underground storage unit that was used medicinally for millennia -- and lets it grow in complete darkness. Learn about the pie plant (and how rhizomes work) in this episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://home.howstuffworks.com/rhubarb.htm
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey brain Stuff
Lauren Vogel bomb here. Rhubarb is a vegetable that is
often eaten like a fruit. It looks like if celery
got into a tub of watermelon colored kool aid, and
tastes like the very sourst combination of apple and orange
(00:23):
that you can imagine. Its leaves are a little bit toxic,
and the plant was used medicinally for millennia before it
really caught on as an ingredient in pies. A culinary
rhubarb is a hybrid of at least a couple species
within the genus room. The plant most likely originated in Asia,
was a star on the Silk Road, and has now
(00:45):
grown in temperate regions around the world. It likes the
weather to stay a little bit chilly, even in the summer.
There's a famous rhubarb triangle in Yorkshire, England, an area
of just nine square miles that's twenty three square kilometers,
known for produce seing early tender crops grown in complete
darkness and traditionally harvested by candle light. Here in the US,
(01:08):
most of the rhubarb that is commercially cultivated comes from
the Pacific Northwest. For the article. This episode is based
on how Stuffwork. Spoke with Tim Richter, a fourth generation
farmer of rhubarb in Washington State and the owner of E. G.
Richter family farm. Richter's great grandfather went west from Minnesota
during the Gold Rush, but he missed the boat on
(01:29):
that opportunity and instead started farm growing rhubarb and other
crops in the late eighteen hundreds. The farm has been
passed down through the generations, and Richter's son now also
helps run it. Richter said, they kind of like the moist,
mild climate, and that's what you've got in Washington a
specifically western Washington. When you get too much sun and
(01:50):
too much heat, the rhubarb can grow, but what tends
to happen it loses the color the stocks start to
turn quite green. Lots of sun light can also cause
rhubarb to grow tougher and more tart, which is why
some is grown and harvested indoors in darkness. Sunlight is
usually necessary to get plants which use photosynthesis for energy
(02:13):
to grow. This indoor rhubarb, usually called forced rhubarb, relies
on a trick of how the plant stores energy year
after year. Rhubarb is a perennial plant, which means it
will come back year after year. When you grow rhubarb
from seeds, the plant will send multiple stalks up, each
(02:34):
topped with a broad, frilly leaf, and underground it will
develop a rhizome off of which the plant's roots grow.
A rhizome is a sort of storage container that some
plants have evolved to save up water and sugars and
other nutrients for potential lean times when water or sunlight
might be scarce. Ginger and turmeric are types of rhizomes,
(02:56):
and as with those plants, you can propagate rhubarb by
plant a cutting from a rhizome. Normal field rhubarb will
grow stalks every year that you can harvest or let
die back during the winter. For forced rhubarb, you then
move the rhizome indoors into a prepared hothouse with controlled
and deeply limited lighting. A Richter explained, you grow this
(03:20):
plant in the field for two years until the rhizome
becomes a pretty good sized ball, about one hundred pound ball.
Then we file those out of the soil in December
once the plants gone dormant, and then we bring them
into these buildings, stack them in these aisles, close the
doors and turn on the heat with a little water,
and it starts shooting up the stalk in search of light.
(03:42):
And then we come along and pull it off. Without light,
the rhizomes spend all that stored energy, sending up stalks
super quick. Supposedly, you can actually hear them crackling as
they grow. And because the plants grow in darkness, they
don't develop the chlorophyll that would normally turn the leaves
(04:03):
and stalks green. The leaves come out yellow, and the
stalk's a brilliant ruby red. Forced rhubarb tends to be
more tender and sweeter than its fellows from the field.
As field rhubarb is exposed to normal light, the stalks
often develop a green tinge or stripes, and will have
a slightly stringier texture and more puckery flavor. Field rhubarb
(04:26):
also typically comes in later in the growing season, arranging
into early summer. There's nothing wrong with either, though you
will pay more at the market for the fussier forced type.
No one is really sure where today's tasty rhubarb comes from,
but researchers think that these culinary hybrids were developed from
earlier medicinal types around the seventeen hundreds in Europe. Rhubarb
(04:51):
was very popular in places like the US and the
UK from the mid eighteen through the mid nineteen hundreds,
but it's fallen off a bit since then. With so
much new to US produce coming in from across the world,
it can be hard for rhubarb to compete in the
global market. A plus, the tart flavor means that most
recipes call for rhubarb to be cooked down, often with
(05:13):
lots of sugar, which can make it less appealing than
produce that's ready to eat right out of hand. But
some people like Richter, will rave about eating a raw
stock dipped in a bit of sugar, And in general,
there are still plenty of rubarb enthusiasts out there, as
seen in the plethora of rhubarb centric festivals from Wakefield,
(05:33):
England in the Rhubarb Triangle, to Pennsylvania Dutch Country, to
the city of Lanesboro also known as the rhubarb Capital
of Minnesota. And if you want to find some most
large grocery stores carry it, either fresh or frozen. You
might find it in bins in the crisper section looking
like long leafless stocks of charred which it is distantly
(05:55):
related to, and yes, it is technically a vegetable. Rhubarb
stalks are botanically what's called pettioles, which are the bit
that connects a leaf to the stem or main body
of a plant. These are usually tiny. Rhubarb stocks are
just wildly overgrown pettioles. Culinarily, many cultures use rhubarb as
(06:18):
a fruit, a cooked down with sugar and maybe other
things like strawberries or apples, perhaps in a jam, in
a sauce for ice cream or custard, or as a
filling for pie. It's sometimes called the pie plant. In
nineteen forty seven, a US customs court in Buffalo, New York,
even declared rhubarb to legally be a fruit, mostly for
(06:39):
tax purposes. The import tax on fruits was lower than
those on vegetables, and the successful argument went that most
Americans use it as a fruit anyway. It doesn't have
to be relegated to dessert, though. Recipes from Eastern Europe
and Western Asia often use rhubarb in savory dishes, bringing
a bright edge to things like rich stews and roasted meats,
(07:02):
either as an ingredient or a sort of relish or chutney.
Think of how you might use cranberry or lemon. While
I was doing the reading for this episode, I found
recipes for a rhubarb chicken bake and for a rhubarb
potato gratten that I just cannot get out of my head.
But however people eat rhubarb, they never or should never
(07:23):
eat the leaves because those are toxic enough that you
don't want to mess with them. They contain a potent
concentration of oxalic acid, which is a compound that binds
to calcium in our blood and thus makes that calcium
unavailable for your body to use. You have to eat
something close to like seventeen pounds or eight kilos to
(07:44):
actually poison yourself, but even a few leaves can cause
nausea and other digestive troubles. Note that the whole plant
does contain some amount of cathartic and laxative compounds, which
can make it easier to poop, which is part of
what medicinal rhubarb was so prized for. Ancient Chinese and
(08:05):
possibly Siberian peoples started cultivating rhubarb over five thousand years ago.
The yellow rhizome in particular was used in traditional Chinese
medicine as a digestive aid. Through this use, dried rhubarb
became a luxury good on the Silk Road around the
early fourteen hundreds. The best stuff went for as much
as saffron or cinnamon. It was so popular as a
(08:29):
medicine that from these sixteen through the eighteen hundreds the
romanov Empire monopolized the cultivation and trade of it around
Europe and made a lot of money while they were
at it. But starting in the seventeen hundreds, as seeds
and rhizomes got out and farmers developed new hybrids and
sugar became more available, rhubarb became more widely known as
(08:51):
a food. It was featured around the coronation of Queen
Victoria in eighteen thirty seven, and the aforementioned Rhubarb Triangle
started up in your sure. At one point there was
a designated train named the Rhubarb that delivered stocks from
the triangle to King's Cross in London every day. By
the late eighteen hundreds, rhubarb but was firmly entrenched as
(09:13):
a dessert plant, not a medicine at all in the UK,
the US and beyond, but Today, researchers are studying extracts
of rhubarb for all kinds of potential medicinal properties, from
yes digestive aid to helping control blood sugar levels, to
protecting against the long term effects of Alzheimer's to antiviral treatments.
(09:36):
Our bodies are complicated and more research is necessary. Definitely
consult a healthcare professional, which I am not before ingesting
a medicinal dose of anything, but I do feel pretty
safe clearing you to try a slice of that pie.
(09:57):
Today's episode is based on the article Rhubarb Poisonous veggie
you can Totally Eat on HowStuffWorks dot Com, written by
Terry year Lagatta. Brainstuff is production of iHeartRadio in partnership
with HowStuffWorks dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klang.
With four more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey brain Stuff
Lauren Vogel bomb here. Rhubarb is a vegetable that is
often eaten like a fruit. It looks like if celery
got into a tub of watermelon colored kool aid, and
tastes like the very sourst combination of apple and orange
(00:23):
that you can imagine. Its leaves are a little bit toxic,
and the plant was used medicinally for millennia before it
really caught on as an ingredient in pies. A culinary
rhubarb is a hybrid of at least a couple species
within the genus room. The plant most likely originated in Asia,
was a star on the Silk Road, and has now
(00:45):
grown in temperate regions around the world. It likes the
weather to stay a little bit chilly, even in the summer.
There's a famous rhubarb triangle in Yorkshire, England, an area
of just nine square miles that's twenty three square kilometers,
known for produce seing early tender crops grown in complete
darkness and traditionally harvested by candle light. Here in the US,
(01:08):
most of the rhubarb that is commercially cultivated comes from
the Pacific Northwest. For the article. This episode is based
on how Stuffwork. Spoke with Tim Richter, a fourth generation
farmer of rhubarb in Washington State and the owner of E. G.
Richter family farm. Richter's great grandfather went west from Minnesota
during the Gold Rush, but he missed the boat on
(01:29):
that opportunity and instead started farm growing rhubarb and other
crops in the late eighteen hundreds. The farm has been
passed down through the generations, and Richter's son now also
helps run it. Richter said, they kind of like the moist,
mild climate, and that's what you've got in Washington a
specifically western Washington. When you get too much sun and
(01:50):
too much heat, the rhubarb can grow, but what tends
to happen it loses the color the stocks start to
turn quite green. Lots of sun light can also cause
rhubarb to grow tougher and more tart, which is why
some is grown and harvested indoors in darkness. Sunlight is
usually necessary to get plants which use photosynthesis for energy
(02:13):
to grow. This indoor rhubarb, usually called forced rhubarb, relies
on a trick of how the plant stores energy year
after year. Rhubarb is a perennial plant, which means it
will come back year after year. When you grow rhubarb
from seeds, the plant will send multiple stalks up, each
(02:34):
topped with a broad, frilly leaf, and underground it will
develop a rhizome off of which the plant's roots grow.
A rhizome is a sort of storage container that some
plants have evolved to save up water and sugars and
other nutrients for potential lean times when water or sunlight
might be scarce. Ginger and turmeric are types of rhizomes,
(02:56):
and as with those plants, you can propagate rhubarb by
plant a cutting from a rhizome. Normal field rhubarb will
grow stalks every year that you can harvest or let
die back during the winter. For forced rhubarb, you then
move the rhizome indoors into a prepared hothouse with controlled
and deeply limited lighting. A Richter explained, you grow this
(03:20):
plant in the field for two years until the rhizome
becomes a pretty good sized ball, about one hundred pound ball.
Then we file those out of the soil in December
once the plants gone dormant, and then we bring them
into these buildings, stack them in these aisles, close the
doors and turn on the heat with a little water,
and it starts shooting up the stalk in search of light.
(03:42):
And then we come along and pull it off. Without light,
the rhizomes spend all that stored energy, sending up stalks
super quick. Supposedly, you can actually hear them crackling as
they grow. And because the plants grow in darkness, they
don't develop the chlorophyll that would normally turn the leaves
(04:03):
and stalks green. The leaves come out yellow, and the
stalk's a brilliant ruby red. Forced rhubarb tends to be
more tender and sweeter than its fellows from the field.
As field rhubarb is exposed to normal light, the stalks
often develop a green tinge or stripes, and will have
a slightly stringier texture and more puckery flavor. Field rhubarb
(04:26):
also typically comes in later in the growing season, arranging
into early summer. There's nothing wrong with either, though you
will pay more at the market for the fussier forced type.
No one is really sure where today's tasty rhubarb comes from,
but researchers think that these culinary hybrids were developed from
earlier medicinal types around the seventeen hundreds in Europe. Rhubarb
(04:51):
was very popular in places like the US and the
UK from the mid eighteen through the mid nineteen hundreds,
but it's fallen off a bit since then. With so
much new to US produce coming in from across the world,
it can be hard for rhubarb to compete in the
global market. A plus, the tart flavor means that most
recipes call for rhubarb to be cooked down, often with
(05:13):
lots of sugar, which can make it less appealing than
produce that's ready to eat right out of hand. But
some people like Richter, will rave about eating a raw
stock dipped in a bit of sugar, And in general,
there are still plenty of rubarb enthusiasts out there, as
seen in the plethora of rhubarb centric festivals from Wakefield,
(05:33):
England in the Rhubarb Triangle, to Pennsylvania Dutch Country, to
the city of Lanesboro also known as the rhubarb Capital
of Minnesota. And if you want to find some most
large grocery stores carry it, either fresh or frozen. You
might find it in bins in the crisper section looking
like long leafless stocks of charred which it is distantly
(05:55):
related to, and yes, it is technically a vegetable. Rhubarb
stalks are botanically what's called pettioles, which are the bit
that connects a leaf to the stem or main body
of a plant. These are usually tiny. Rhubarb stocks are
just wildly overgrown pettioles. Culinarily, many cultures use rhubarb as
(06:18):
a fruit, a cooked down with sugar and maybe other
things like strawberries or apples, perhaps in a jam, in
a sauce for ice cream or custard, or as a
filling for pie. It's sometimes called the pie plant. In
nineteen forty seven, a US customs court in Buffalo, New York,
even declared rhubarb to legally be a fruit, mostly for
(06:39):
tax purposes. The import tax on fruits was lower than
those on vegetables, and the successful argument went that most
Americans use it as a fruit anyway. It doesn't have
to be relegated to dessert, though. Recipes from Eastern Europe
and Western Asia often use rhubarb in savory dishes, bringing
a bright edge to things like rich stews and roasted meats,
(07:02):
either as an ingredient or a sort of relish or chutney.
Think of how you might use cranberry or lemon. While
I was doing the reading for this episode, I found
recipes for a rhubarb chicken bake and for a rhubarb
potato gratten that I just cannot get out of my head.
But however people eat rhubarb, they never or should never
(07:23):
eat the leaves because those are toxic enough that you
don't want to mess with them. They contain a potent
concentration of oxalic acid, which is a compound that binds
to calcium in our blood and thus makes that calcium
unavailable for your body to use. You have to eat
something close to like seventeen pounds or eight kilos to
(07:44):
actually poison yourself, but even a few leaves can cause
nausea and other digestive troubles. Note that the whole plant
does contain some amount of cathartic and laxative compounds, which
can make it easier to poop, which is part of
what medicinal rhubarb was so prized for. Ancient Chinese and
(08:05):
possibly Siberian peoples started cultivating rhubarb over five thousand years ago.
The yellow rhizome in particular was used in traditional Chinese
medicine as a digestive aid. Through this use, dried rhubarb
became a luxury good on the Silk Road around the
early fourteen hundreds. The best stuff went for as much
as saffron or cinnamon. It was so popular as a
(08:29):
medicine that from these sixteen through the eighteen hundreds the
romanov Empire monopolized the cultivation and trade of it around
Europe and made a lot of money while they were
at it. But starting in the seventeen hundreds, as seeds
and rhizomes got out and farmers developed new hybrids and
sugar became more available, rhubarb became more widely known as
(08:51):
a food. It was featured around the coronation of Queen
Victoria in eighteen thirty seven, and the aforementioned Rhubarb Triangle
started up in your sure. At one point there was
a designated train named the Rhubarb that delivered stocks from
the triangle to King's Cross in London every day. By
the late eighteen hundreds, rhubarb but was firmly entrenched as
(09:13):
a dessert plant, not a medicine at all in the UK,
the US and beyond, but Today, researchers are studying extracts
of rhubarb for all kinds of potential medicinal properties, from
yes digestive aid to helping control blood sugar levels, to
protecting against the long term effects of Alzheimer's to antiviral treatments.
(09:36):
Our bodies are complicated and more research is necessary. Definitely
consult a healthcare professional, which I am not before ingesting
a medicinal dose of anything, but I do feel pretty
safe clearing you to try a slice of that pie.
(09:57):
Today's episode is based on the article Rhubarb Poisonous veggie
you can Totally Eat on HowStuffWorks dot Com, written by
Terry year Lagatta. Brainstuff is production of iHeartRadio in partnership
with HowStuffWorks dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klang.
With four more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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