6 Facts You May Not Know About the Humble Rhubarb

Photo Credit: Iowa Spirit Walker

Here at Forsham Country we were going to create a run of the mill Rhubarb Crumble recipe, pretty tasty but not quite what you’d label as original when it comes to feature writing so we thought we’d bring you something entirely different. Welcome to 6 facts you may or may not know about the humble rhubarb.

1. The best time for picking naturally grown rhubarb in the northern hemisphere is mid to late spring, April/May and in the southern hemisphere about October/November.


2. There is a species of giant rhubarb ‘Gunnera manicata’, which originates from Brazil and South America. It’s an ideal plant to add as a feature around large ponds and you can actually buy them here in the UK, although beware, this species of rhubarb has been known to grow to a height of two metres with leaves that can have a span of around one and a half metres. Unfortunately it’s not edible so don’t get any getting ideas about making a giant rhubarb crumble.


3. Known as the Wakefield Triangle in West Yorkshire with the other two points being Leeds and Bradford, make up an area of the UK with a rich history of growing rhubarb where there was once about 200 forced rhubarb growers. With the right type of soil and huge amounts of readily available coal to heat the forcing sheds these growers had a clear advantage over the rest of the country for growing rhubarb.


4. Rhubarb also has a number of medicinal purposes with one of its common uses being one of the ingredients used in natural laxative remedies as well as being externally applied in the treatment of thermal burns. Just as a disclaimer we’d like to point out that these statements are from someone who’s not a medical professional and that if you do need medical assistance in the above areas we’d rather you consult a professional instead of going rooting around in your garden for a couple of sticks of rhubarb.


5. You’ve heard of strawberry blonde, well how about rhubarb blonde. Not quite, but rhubarb root can be used as a hair dye to create blonde tones.


6. Finally, ‘rhubarb’ was used as RAF slang for low level fighter missions, with one of the first instances of the phrase being used was by two spitfires of No66 Squadron during an attack on Le Touquet.