Rhubarb Varieties

Red Varieties

• Today, rhubarb is often eaten as a sweetened dessert. Rhubarb can be baked in a pastry shell as a pie or tart and as a cooked mixed fruit compote, as in strawberry-rhubarb pie, rhubarb jam or rhubarb cobbler. Cooks prefer the red varieties because they add an attractive deep color to desserts. Commonly used red varieties include: Crimson, Crimson Cherry, Crimson Red, Crimson Wine, Valentine, Cherry Red and MacDonald.

Speckled Pink Varieties

• When a subtle pink and green color is desired, such as in mixed fruit compote, speckled pink varieties are used. These vary from sweet/tart to very tart: Victoria is sweet/tart but produces too many flowering stalks and not enough leaves with petioles; Strawberry has pink stems; The variety called German Wine has a high juice yield -- important for wine making. This variety is not used for cooking.

Green Varieties

• Oxalic acid is not red, so the green rhubarb varieties are just as safe to eat as the reds and pinks. The oxalic acid is still present in the petioles (leaf stalks) but the concentration is much lower than in the leaves. The green varieties are incorrectly thought to be more tart and are used in cooking to intensify the flavor of very sweet fruit, especially in pies. The best known green variety is Riverside Giant.

Medicinal Uses

• Two species of rhubarb are cultivated -- Rheum palmatum and Rheum rhabarbarum. Varieties of R. rhabarbarum are cultivated for eating and R. palmatum is cultivated for medicinal uses. All parts of both rhubarb species, except the leaf petioles, are known to cause kidney damage and sometimes death. The root of both species will induce vomiting and produce a strong laxative. Rhubarb juice from the petioles can be used as a mild astringent.