For all you nutrition freaks out there… wot is Rhubarb, a fruit or a vegetable. I’ve even read that it’s a herb. I really need to know .
Down here where I come from (the bottom of the globe) it’s considered to be fruit, what about in your neck of the woods?
Uh, Bronze – I think you’ve wandered into the wrong forum with this one. This here is the ranting forum. You might be more after General Questions (GQ) with this one.
Try emailing a mod to close this one up or move it.
Moderator’s Note: Cursed rhubard! Vile, insidious thing–is it a fruit or a vegetable? Or even a herb! Whatever it is, no decent, self-respecting…
Oh, all right. Moving from the Pit to General Questions.
I just know my grandfather put it in his ice cream. Grossed me out every time.
I seem to recall it being referred to as an herb.
[yum]Strawberry Rhubarb Cobbler…[/yum]
:::.D&R.:::
I stand corrected.
Of course, I was 4 or 5 at the time, so sue me. 
Just an afterthought: I, as is with me, totally abuse the course of nature by treating rhubarb as a fruit that, chopped up, goes over extremely well with fried mince and onion. But, YMMV (and I’m sure it does!) 
Rhubarb leaves are extremely poisonous, one of the most deadly things in the average home garden.
Rhubarb pie! Yum yum!
Is this true then? I grew up in a small village and spent a lot of time hiking and biking around the country roads, alongside which you often found rhubarb growing (usually close to rhubarb fields, so we always assumed it had spread outside the field), which was great if you were hungry or thirsty (you can suck juices out of the stalks). I was warned against eating the leaves since they were lethally poisonous, but as I grew older and wiser I figured it was just a legend. Are you telling me it’s not?
Rhubarb and apple pie is a gift from the gods.
And welcome to the boards, Bronze.
Thank god for rhubarbinfo!!!
It appears that eating large quantities of uncooked rhubarb leafs can lead to posioning.
G’day
Rhubarb leaves contain oxalic acid in sufficient quantity that it is unwise to eat them in quantity–raw or cooked. And I am not allowed to eat rhubarb at all any more because I tend to form calcium oxalate kidney stones.
Rhubarb is definitely not a fruit: the part you eat has no seeds and doesn’t develop from a flower.
Rhubarb is a vegetable, but then ‘vegetable’ is a broad category: in the only technical sense it includes fruit, herbs, and spices.
Regards,
Agback
Extremely poisonous might be an exageration, but they are indeed unhealthy. Quoting from rhubarbinfo.com:
I believe that potato greens are more poisonous than that…
Having grown up seeing wild rhubarb in Michigan, I can’t imagine why anyone would think it was a fruit. It’s a plant with big leaves, and the part you eat is the stem or stalk of the leaf. That says “vegetable” to me. Maybe herb. But certainly not fruit.
So, you’re saying I should take that rhubarb salad off the menu, then? The one with the hemlock vinagarette? But noone ever comes back to complain about it…
I suspect those who think it’s fruit are people who’ve never seen rhubarb growing and only think of it in association with pies and jams. (I had some growing in our backyard garden as a child, and learned quickly to distinguish between the rhubarb and a similar looking weed without red on the stalks that we called “skunk cabbage”, due to its foul odor.)
Rhubarb is super interesting because the leaves and the roots are both poisonous, but the stalk isn’t. Freaky-deaky.
The part of the rhubarb that you eat is the stalk. It looks much like a celery stalk but had a definite red tinge . In the midwest it grows like a weed and requires no special care. You can cut it down and mow it over and it will come back every year. To get rid of it you have to dig the roots out.
Raw, it is very sour and nasty. Some like it cooked with lots, and I mean lots, of sugar added.
I remember as a child, it seemed like all the “old folks” at the time had some rhubarb growing somewhere. If you don’t like to eat it, I guess some used it as a decorative plant , but it by itself isn’t very pretty.