What's the Big Deal About Rhubarb?

Anybody who listens to A Praire Home Companion has heard the rhubarb skits. It suddenly occurred to me that there are probably some people who don't know what rhubarb is all about.


Rhubarb probably originated in China. Earliest records date back to 2700 BC where rhubarb was cultivated for medicinal purposes. Marco Polo, knew all about the Chinese rhubarb rhizome and talked about it at length in the accounts of his travels.

Varieties of rhubarb have a long history as medicinal plants in traditional Chinese medicine, but the use of rhubarb as food is a relatively recent innovation, first recorded in 17th century England, after affordable sugar became available to common people.

Early records of rhubarb in America identify an unnamed Maine gardener as having obtained seed or root stock from Europe in the period between 1790-1800. He introduced it to growers in Massachusetts where its popularity spread and by 1822 it was sold in produce markets.

In the days before long-distance produce shipping the people who lived in the northern parts of the country went from October until May without having any fresh vegetables. True - carrots, cabbages, squash and some varieties of apples would keep until early spring but they lacked the freshness of something new-grown. The three earliest edibles here in Maine are rhubarb, dandelion, and fiddleheads. You have to know where to find (unclaimed) fiddleheads and you only have a few days to harvest dandelion before it is too bitter to eat. Reliable old rhubarb grows where you plant it without much trouble - in fact it can be hard to eradicate if you try to get rid of it. Every old farmstead in Maine had rhubarb growing somewhere. On the south side of a stone barn foundation, where it gets plenty of sun and natural fertilizer, it comes early and grows big.

The pretty red kind you find in supermarkets these days is mild stuff compared to some of the rhubarb we had as kids. I remember one patch where it was grass-green with 4-5 foot stems. I don't think there is enough sugar in all of Cuba to sweeten a pot of those old plants. Of course, as kids we would eat the raw stalks.

There was also a belief that rhubarb would "clean out your system", which was deemed a desirable thing to do in the spring; indeed, rhubarb can do that if you eat too much.

The last few years Julia has been adding a little bit of fresh or candied ginger to the rhubarb pie. Try it, it's nice! We also were served rhubarb juice at a health food restaurant in New Brunswick. Lightly stew the rhubarb and strain it through a jelly bag. Keep the juice in the back of your refrigerator. Use it like lemonade extract.

A Strange Visitor

This fellow is an Eastern Gray Treefrog (Hyla versicolor). While we have often come home after a gig late at night to find all the downstairs windows and doors covered with hundreds of spring peepers (Pseudacris crucifer), this is the first time one of these has visited. He spent the entire afternoon on the living room door. Late in the afternoon I moved him to an oak tree, a much better place for a tree frog. He almost disappeared on the mottled trunk.

Who needs a fly on the wall when you have a frog on the door?