Talk:Rhubarb

Toxic?

I have heard that rhubarb becomes toxic when mixed with pineapple. Is anyone able to comment with authority?

I cannot comment with authority, but this sure sounds crazy. There are many recipies for deserts in which rhubarb is mixed with pineapple. Look online a bit for some kind of documented source for your rumor. If you can't find anything, and if there is an absence of any other evidence, my advice would be to utterly ignore that rumor.

Rhubarb is toxic by default. I have read about people dying after eating several kilograms of Rhubarb. Lapinmies 19:11, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

The stems? Njál 17:49, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

This is extremely unlikely. The leaves have the most toxin, and even so you'd need to eat about 10 to 11 pounds in a sitting to get a toxic dose. The stems have much less toxin so you'd need much more. Unless you are in a rhubarb eating contest I would not worry about it. I know I've eaten rhubarb pie many times in my life with no ill effects.

Note, the figures given are for a LD50 for someone 65kg. The LD50 is the median lethal dose. What this means (more or less) is that 50% of people will die on or before eating such a dose (without treatment anyway). It is misleading therefore to suggest you need to eat 10 to 11 pounds to get a 'toxic dose'. 8 pounds or less could very well be enough to be lethal. You're also likely to get very sick long before you eat a lethal dose. I'm not suggesting people should be worried and I'm not particularly sure anyone would even eat 500g of the leaves but I do think it's important that the LD50 isn't a 'toxic dose' Nil Einne 14:40, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

I think this all rather academic. The effect of eating 8-10lb of rhubarb on the digestion would be so explosive that I doubt any normal diner would ever reach the point of toxicity. Incidentally, does rhubarb stop jellies setting, like fresh pineapple and kiwi fruit? Stephen

No.138.87.227.181 22:02, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

"In former days, a common and affordable sweet for children in Yorkshire was a tender stick of rhubarb, dipped in copious amounts of sugar." In former days? I still eat it like that (and I'm not from Yorkshire). Njál 17:49, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

I must admit I still eat it like this whenever it's available, even when it's become quite sour (but I like it like that), although my family were originally from Yorkshire. I noticed a few grammar things, I'll try to correct. Terri G 12:44, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

I removed the phrase "so the phloem will explode" from the toxic effects section, because it sounded like one would want the phloem to explode, which I can't imagine one would, especially if you were planning to eat it.

The toxic section needs a lot more, useful information. Some of us like to eat raw rhubarb! (I've never noticed any ill effects, though bystanders often shudder. I can't believe that some people have not been eating it, since forever.) We need to know if this is harmful in any way, short of being lethal. And presuming that cooking makes the rhubarb "safe", exactly how much does it have to be cooked, and how much oxalic acid remains? 69.87.201.38 16:07, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Let me get this straight - you're on a website talking about rhubarb? Cool. -- SilvaStorm

In Iowa it is common to play croquet near the rhubarb patch, Not only is a citation needed, I can't imagine how it would be "common" to have both rhubarb AND croquet in Iowa, colocated.:)Mzmadmike 06:38, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Root ball

Does anyone have a photo of the (rather extraordinary) rhubarb root ball? It's something to see. --Kickstart70-T-C 17:29, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Rhubarb triangle

Note that Wikipedia already has an article on this that names the poits of the triangle as Leeds, Wakefield and Pontefract. This seems much more likely. Morley is a South Western suburb of Leeds and does not give much of a triangle when plotted on the map, and moreover is entirely urban. Towards the east of Leeds and Wakefield is lower and generally more of a market gardening area. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 82.37.0.230 (talk) 18:59, 10 May 2007 (UTC).

Piestengel

I have googled this term and only found matches on English speaking pages. Not a single German page. I personally - although German - have never heard this term. Could somebody proof that this is a German word? I not only looked for "Piestengel" but also "Piestängel" according to the new German grammer... Bernburgerin 19:34, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Confirmed. I'm German, too, and I've never come across this word. This must be some kind of Urban Legend in the English-speaking world. The term 'pie' is seldomly used in German, and only as an English loan word in its original pronounciation, so it's very improbable that the compound noun 'Piestengel' has ever been in widespread use in the German-speaking world. I vote to remove the reference, it's misleading. The German word for rhubarb is 'Rhabarber'. 217.85.138.201 09:08, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

And a third german is here (yes, me) and even he has never ever heard this word. I think this should be deleted. --85.177.211.139 03:26, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Vegetable?

"Rhubarb is actually a vegetable" Vegetable is a very vague word. That statement should be omitted. Just classify it botanically and include the history of how US Customs dealt with it. Otherwise its a great article! Lance May

Yes, it is a Vegetable. I do not know why it is called a fruit on the page! Because it's related to another vegetable and is in a vegetable family, IT SHOULD BE A VEGETABLE, NOT A FRUIT. I learned this on the cobbler episode of "Good Eats". 130.13.99.152 (talk) 04:18, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Vegetables are edible plants.

Fruits are vegetables with seeds - if not seeds, the fruiting body of the plant.

All fruits are vegetables, not all vegetables are fruits.

Question - green rhubarb

I have rhubarb in my garden. Much of it has green stalks instead of the usual red/pink. At one time these plants produced the red. Why is it now green and is it safe to eat?

Thanks! Amy12.109.74.231 13:11, 23 May 2007 (UTC) Answer: Have been growing rhubarb for years and as the plants get older they do not get as red. Start new shoots and they should get red also will be a lot slimmer for the first 2 or 3 years' Harry J Paad 69.77.218.120 22:00, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Oxalic acid content

"In the petioles, the amount of oxalic acid is much lower" - this article says that the concentration (the concentrations can be calculated from table I) is roughly the same in April and May and that at the end of June and the beginning of August the concentration in the blades is roughly twice the concentration in the petioles (while the concentration in the petioles at the end of June is only slightly higher than in April and May). Unfortunately, I am currently not sure to get absolute numbers from this quite antique paper - but I assume one "milli-equivalent" is a milligram of KOH used in titration, and there should be 2 mol KOH for 1 mol oxalic acid - but then the maximal concentration in the blades would be only 0.035% instead of the 0.5% from the wikipedia article. Better sources are welcome. Icek 14:34, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

I have good news and bad news. The good news is that a google scholar search for "Rhubarb poisoning" shows a lot of seemingly relevant papers, including several case studies of patients who died (from the 1960s) (Ann Paediatr Fenn. (1964) 10:228-31. INGESTION OF RHUBARB LEAVES AS CAUSE OF OXALIC ACID POISONING.; Ann Paediatr Fenn. (1960) 6:144-7. Death of a child from oxalic acid poisoning due to eating rhubarb leaves.; Dtsch Med Wochenschr. (1964 Dec 11) 89:2379-81. ACUTE RENAL FAILURE AND JAUNDICE FOLLOWING RHUBARB LEAF POISONING). And also a paper which seems to cover the anthraquinones (Tidsskr Nor Laegeforen. 1980 May 20;100(14):959-61 - in Norwegian). But as far as I could tell not even abstracts of these papers are online. Might require a trip to a medical library. Oh, and our figure for oxalic acid LD50 differs from the one in the Oxalic acid article (not that we should equate rhubarb leaf toxicity with oxalic acid toxicity, given the likely existence of another toxin, which I've added a source for in the article). Kingdon 13:28, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Regarding the oral LD50 in rats, from the first few Google results:

• 375 mg/kg: [1][2][3]
• 7.5 g/kg: [4][5][6][7][8][9][10]

This website contains further information about the composition of rhubarb, giving the oxalic acid content as 0.124 - 1.360 %. Icek 02:26, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Here is another article on the acids in rhubarb - I'm going to cite it as a reference for the 0.5%. Icek 02:37, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

rhubarb

I put in rhubarb this spring -new planting; it's now 2ft tall and gorgeous but stalks still green except for one. Will they all turn red? When is it supposed to be harvested? Thanks for any input...JJGPhxgriffins 17:21, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Rhubarb in Portal Game

Should there be a popular culture section in this article? The new video game Portal identifies Rhubarb repeatedly in the ingredients for cake towards the end of the game, and I'm sure there are many other references to it in movies and books. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.180.138.37 (talk) 21:01, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

I think so too, given that cake is the main "theme" of the game, and the amount of rubarb involved. --210.49.164.105 (talk) 02:40, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

History in the U.S.

This line in the entry bothers me: "Until the 1940s rhubarb was considered a vegetable. It became a fruit when US customs officials, baffled by the foreign food, decided it should be classified according to the way it was eaten."

This is an odd sentance. It gives the impression that rhubarb only came into the U.S. in the 1940s, and that's not the case. Every hundred year old farmhouse in Maine has a rhubarb patch. Our Maine Rebekahs Cookbook from 1939 has recipes for rhubarb, with no reference to it being new or foreign. I've found references in one of the webpages footnoted in this article to a Maine farmer growing it between 1790 and 1800. (I don't know if the url will be visible, but it's the Rhubarb Compendium page, http://www.rhubarbinfo.com/rhubarb-history.html#TOC11 .) The Customs Officials may have begun classifying things because of other new things that started coming in at that time, but rhubarb wasn't one of the new things coming in.

The thing that worries me is that the Wikipedia reference has duplicated that sentence, with all it's ambiguity, and people are going to start believing that rhubarb was new to us only such a short time ago. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.207.254.76 (talk) 14:26, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

Planting

Can I plant a rhubarb by a rose bush.Well it kill the rose —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.33.170.112 (talk) 17:35, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Rhubarb Trivia

How about adding in the Rhubarb Pie references around pop culture including, but not specific to, the Rhubarb Pie references in Praerie Home Companion? 69.112.29.153 (talk) 18:07, 31 May 2008 (UTC)