The Rhubarb Triangle

Rhubarb is generally classified as a fruit these days, as it more often than not lends itself to being used like a fruit, but it is, in fact, a vegetable. It’s a hybrid of several species, first grown on the banks of the Volga in Siberia and transported down the old Silk Road to China for medicinal purposes, and there are records of this trade dating back to 2,700 BC. Marco Polo was said to have brought it to Europe and it was recorded in Britain by the sixteenth century. Up until the nineteenth century, it was only really the root that was used, dried as a laxative, and for stomach, colon and liver complaints. Its culinary life really only developed in the nineteenth century.