TS Te 
RHEUM PALMATUMs ORD, XL, Oleracee, | 665 
minated by three reflected stigmata: the germen- becomes a tri- 
angular seed, with membranous margins of a reddish colour. It is 
a native of Tartary in Asia. 
It was not until the year 1732 that naturalists became acquainted 
with any plant which seemed to afford the Rhabarbarum Officinale,* 
when some plants, received from Russia by Jussieu at Paris, and 
Rand at Chelsea,” were said to supply this important desideratum, 
and as such were adopted by Linnaeus, in his first edition of the 
Species Plantarum, under the name 6f Rheum Rhabarbarum. 
This however was not very generally received as the genuine 
Rhubarb plant; and with a view to ascertain this matter more 
completely, Kauw Boerhaave procured from a Tartarian rhubarb 
merchant the seeds of those plants, whose roots he annually sold, 
and which were admitted at Petersborough to be the true rhubarb: 
these seeds were soon ed pre were discovered by De 
Gorter to © produce. two distinct species, viz. the R- Rhabarbarum 
of Linnezus, or as it has since been called R. undulatum, and 
another species, a specimen of which was presented to Linnzus, 
who declared it to be a new one, and was first mentioned in the 
second edition of the Sp. Plantarum in 1762, hy the name of 
R, palmatum, (the plant we have figured). Previous to this time, 
De Gorter had repeatedly sent its seeds to Linnzxus,* but the 
young plants which they produced constantly perished ; at length 
* The Rheum Rhaponticum of Linneus, or Rhapoaticum folio Lapathi majoris 
glabro of C. Bauhin, is generally supposed to be the Rhabarbaram of the ancients; 
“¢ Alpinus aliique putant esse Pa vel Pov veterum, cujus radicem usurparunt. 
(Vide Dioscorid. Mat. Med. lib. 3. cap. 2.) Apse Alpinus sibi circa annum 1610, 
stirpem ex Thracia procuravit, ct hee Patavio Venetiam primo, dein inde ir 
Angliam ad Parkinsonium (Theat. Bot. p. 157.) prevenit.”. Murray Ap. Med. 
vol. 4, 354. It is well known that the ancient rhubarb had not the purgative 
power of the modern. , 
> Seeds of this species were also sent ta Miller from Boerhaave at Leyden, by 
the title of “ Rhabarbarum verum Chinense.”? See his Gard, Dict. 
© See the letters between De Gorter and Linnzus, by Nozeman, in Ve crhanilelingen 
van het Genootschap to Rotterdam, vol. 1. p. 455, and cited by Murray. 
¥ 
