This deadly poisonous plant-don't eat the leaves!-started out as a medicinal aid, its root considered excellent by the Chinese for constipation and other unmentionable digestive troubles. Rhubarb probably came from northern China originally. The Romans named the plant after Rha, the river along which it grew, and barbarum, or foreign, because the territory beyond that river, today the Volga, in western Russia, didn't belong to the Romans.

People didn't start eating the plant's stalks until the early 1800's, probably because those who first tried the leaves sickened and died, thereby decreasing the rhubarb's potential for popularity. Rhubarb is a cool weather plant grown commercially in Poland, Russia and the United Kingdom, and on a very small scale in the United States. Icelanders enjoy eating rhubarb soup, Americans favor strawberry rhubarb pie.