RHUBARB. 197 



segments, and stand upon long smooth round footstalks : the leaves 

 which proceed from the stalk are placed at the joints, which they 

 supply with membranous sheathes, and are successively smaller to- 

 wards the upper part of the stem: the flowers terminate the branches, 

 which they surround in numerous clusters, forming a kind of spike, 

 and appear in April and May : the corolla divides into six obtuse 

 segments, which are of a greenish white colour, and alternately 

 smaller: the calyx is wanting : the filaments are nine, slender, about 

 the length of the corolla, and furnished with oblong double antherse: 

 the style is very short, and terminated by three reflected stigmata; 

 the germen becomes a triangular seed, with membranous margins 

 of a reddish colour, li 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 of 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 Petersburgh to be the true rhubarb : these seeds were 

 soon propagated, and were discovered by De Gorter to produce 

 two distinct species, viz, the R. rhabarbarum of Linnaeus, or as it 

 has since been called R. undulatum, and another species, a specimen 

 of which was presented to Linnaeus, who declared it to be a new 

 one, and was first mentioned in the second edition of the Sp. Plan- 

 tarum in 1762. by the name of R. palmatura. Previous to this 



* The rheum rhaponticum of Linnaeus, or rhaponticura folio lapathi majoris 

 glabro of C. B.Juhin, is generally supposed to be the rhabarbarum of the ancients * 

 " Alpinus aliique putant esse P vel Pw>v veterum, cujus radicem usur 

 (Vide Dioscorid. Mat. Med. lib.S, cap. 2.) Ipse Alpinus sibi circa annum 

 1610, stirpem ex Thracia procuravit, et hoec Patavio Venetiam primo, dein inde 

 in Angliam ad Parkinsonium (Theat. Bot. p. 157.) devenit." Murray Ap. 

 Med. vol. iv. 354. It is well known that the ancient rhubarb had not the pur- 

 gative power of the modern. 



f Seeds of this species were also sent to Miller from Boerhaave, at Leyden,, 

 by the title of " Rhabarbarum verum Chinenae." See his Gard. Diet, 



Q3 



