In England, rhubarb is grown by candlelight | Hacker News Reader

In England, rhubarb is grown by candlelight

bbc.com

167 pointsMiriamWeiner51 comments

This is an interesting history of the role of Scotland in the story of how rhubarb seeds were smuggled back from Russia in the 18th century: http://www.rcpe.ac.uk/sites/default/files/jrcpe_47_1_lee.pdf (PDF, 5Mb)

A particularly choice quote:

"From 1750 to 1850 Russia was making a fortune from trading rhubarb root through St Petersburg to Europe via the Baltic. Russia supplied and controlled the export of the dried root, thus controlling its price. It banned the export of the seeds to block the growing of the plant elsewhere. Catherine the Great took considerable interest in the cultivation and sale of rhubarb, as it helped to finance her military campaigns in Finland, Poland, Ukraine and Crimea. The price of rhubarb root rocketed! At one time the seeds were more valuable, weight for weight, than gold. To give some idea of the veneration that was given to the plant, Lord Stanhope, a Catholic peer, sent some rhubarb seeds to the Pope in a gold case, encouraging him to grow the plant in the gardens at the Vatican. This monopoly could not last indefinitely. Professor John Hope stated in 1770 that if 'Russian' rhubarb could be grown successfully in the UK, it would save the economy about £1 million a year (approximately £20–30 million in today's money)"

This just goes to show the west has blatant cultural disregard for intellectual property - this was daring IP theft, calculated to displace the innovative Russian rhubarb industry and costing it millions of pounds /s

(The original copyright holder could not be reached for comment, despite significant prayer.)

Litigious food makes my stomach turn.

There's plenty of incentives in the market to innovate in the GMO space without legal protections, as there have been for thousands of years. Absent those protections, GMO development would probably see more cooperation innovation without hurting the speed of innovation.

Regional protections for product labeling make a lot more sense (vidalia onions...) and improve competition while still benefiting large growers.

This is nothing compared to how we stole tea from China. For All the Tea in China: How England Stole the World's Favorite Drink and Changed History was a good read about that.

And rubber.

_The Thief at the end of the World_, the story of "bio-pirate" Henry Wickham, who smuggled rubber seeds out of Brazil in the 1870s, is a great read.[0]

[0]-https://www.amazon.com/Thief-End-World-Rubber-Empire/dp/0670...

See Ha-Joon Chang's Bad Samaritans:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Samaritans:_The_Myth_of_Fr...

"Free Trade" and strong "intellectual property" regimes are tools of economically dominant, not upstart, countries.

Chamber's Encyclopaedia, Editorial Statement, Revised Edition, 1874: Or a 19th Century Edit War

https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/4xe2k1/chamber...

("Free trade" plays a role.)

"would save the economy about £1 million a year (approximately £20–30 million in today's money)"

Making the (I'm guessing safe) assumption that the UK Rhubarb industry is worth more than that. I wonder if this is an indication of just how much the economy has grown that that now seems like such a small sum (the £20-£30 million figure). Or if it's an example of the value of something increasing despite it becoming 'free'. Rhubarb is effectively now in the public domain, and it seems crazy (to me at least) that someone would try to maintain a monopoly on the plant. Although half way through writing this I remembered Monsanto...

Over the course of 250 years I think applying a CPI conversion is far too simple to capture all of the qualitative changes in a political economy. That said, this list estimates 40x increase in the size of the UK economy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_regions_by_past_GDP_%2...

A billion pound savings isn't anything to sneeze at in a niche luxury good.

Agreed, it isn't clear to me what a 'good' conversion would be though. I suppose you could compare to an average wage or something, but then that doesn't capture subsistence farmers, or that there wasn't really a middle class then, or that on some measures a poor person today, is better off than a king from the 18th century.

On top of that, the nature of the thing we are measuring has changed. Today it's a fruit, 250 years ago it's seeds and root were medicinal.

All that said I'm struggling to work out where you got the billion £ figure from, or the 40x increase. The first 2 tables seem to suggest growth on the order of 100-150 fold, which would suggest £100 millions, rather than a billion, or am I misunderstanding something?

I was looking at 1820-2008 in Maddison which gives us the 40x increase. Both those numbers are in 1990 dollars, so using your estimate of 20 million after inflation 20/36,232 ~= 1000/1,446,959 ignoring all the confounding coffee stains on the back of the napkin.

The article says one can hear "forced" rhubarb grow. "Forcing" is a technique to stimulate growth of sweeter rhubarb stalks by depriving the plant of sunlight. I found this recording of the sound on YouTube[1]. Apparently, you can also hear bamboo grow[2].

1. https://youtu.be/l5HrnZXya5M

2. https://youtu.be/9HkhBxBZELk

There are so many little noises in nature that are often drowned out by man-made noise, or even just the louder animals looking to mate. I enjoy listening to earthworms crawl around in the leaves at night in my back yard.

Oh it is amazing as so many sounds we miss out upon as they get drowned out so easily. Be that other sounds or human materiels effecting how existing sounds travel (nice simple example would be over-ear headphones, you can hear people speak, most sounds over them and yet they completely drown out a cat purring loudly).

I've been playing with contact microphones the past year and recently made a balanced one myself that eliminates a lot of the noise such types of high impedance microphones pick up. The sounds you can hear in nature are amazing, just that you usually have to get away from it all just to be able to hear nature at play. But with contact microphones, you can open up a whole new level of sounds, think of them as microscopes for audio. But a simple piezo contact microphone is easy to make and if you have the equipment to take a balanced input signal, then for the extra cost of the extra piezo disc and 3 wire cable, that can be done just as cheaply. You will also need a pre-amp and though most things you can plug a microphone into will have some preamp that will get you started. Myself, I use a Zoom H4N pro portable audio recorder. Can get cheaper options, even projects that people have made their own form of portable recorder. But if you just want to listen, a simple preamp (can make one or buy one cheap enough) and some over-ear headphones, will get you into another world of sounds in everyday life that we miss out upon. Like I said earlier - it is like an audio microscope and opens up so much we miss out upon.

One thing you will learn, most nature programs you see upon TV, mess about/fake and play with the real sounds actually made in nature with a bias towards faking it and a penchant of layering so many effects that it makes autotune look like an angel in the music world for any purist. Bit like finding out about the actual status of Santa after years of childhood idolisation :).

But so many sounds we miss out upon. Equally we are very limited in our senses, Ultraviolet photography in nature shows us this. Sounds are just the same with our limited hearing, but that doesn't stop us. Bat listening devices exist and open up a another way of exploring the World around us.

If your into geeking out, you could use an array of contact microphones, sound identification and with placement, work out the timing and with triangulation - track all the earthworms. That would be a fun project, but probably low-down on many a project list.

That is a really neat way of thinking of things. Thanks for sharing.

I listen to music a lot, but sometimes it's worth it to take my headphones off and listen - really listen to the world around me. It's strangely calming.

In the spring, some plants like Araceae can push through dry leaves quite forcefully. The dry leaf acts as a sort of sound board against which the growing stalks scratch. Eerie sound.

(Or was it earthworms? It was just my hypothesis)

Thanks for posting this! I was disappointed that the article didn't feature an audio clip at least, so YouTube was going to be my next stop.

Growing up, rhubarb was neither sweet nor interesting. I'm now quite intrigued.

Rhubarb is actually a very useful food. It is a good source of Emodin, which has gentle laxative properties. IMHO, it's better to eat foods that gently facilitate bowel movements than than to rely on laxatives.

I've been growing rhubarb for several years now. It comes back by itself every spring, and can be frozen for off-season use. The rabbits and gophers won't eat it, because the leaves are rather toxic to us animals (the stalks are perfectly edible, either cooked or raw). All I have to do is make sure my plants get adequate water.

This spring I bought three more bare rhubarb roots when they first appeared at the garden store. Last spring I bought bare root rhubarb late in the spring, when they were half-off, but they never grew.

The instructions say to not harvest any stalks the first year, so the plant can put energy into its root. When I bought my first plant it was already a year or two old. The garden center guy said to cut the bottom out of the pot it came in and put that over the plant, so the stalks would have to 'stretch' to reach sunlight.

Here's a random page about forcing, as this bbc article mentions: http://rhubarbinfo.com/forcing

My blog post about Rhubarb as a 'functional food': https://radialappliance.teslabox.com/2017/06/pie-plant-rhuba...

I think Rhubarb roots can be split when they get big enough, sort of like bulbs, but I haven't gotten to that point yet.

Rhubarb makes for great rhubarb pie and compote. I love the taste in a season. I still remember when as a student I were climbing and in a mountain shelter rhubarb pie was served at 5pm. Such a treat.

But it contains a lot of calcium oxalate and potassium oxalate so watch for kidney stones.

We have a couple of established rhubarb plants in our garden that have been quite productive - I've just planted a dozen rhubarb seeds, although it says it'll be 2 years before I can actually pick anything (assuming they grow).

> Rhubarb is actually a very useful food.

Who do you think you're arguing against? This is a whole article about how it's useful for a lot of things.

Or possibly the OP is arguing against generally held preconceptions. As in, "Lamborghinis are actually lower in CO2 emissions than the average coupe on an annual basis, because their owners drive them so little."

Seems funny to respond to an article that says X with 'Actually, X'. Doesn't 'actually' usually introduce an alternative view or a contradiction?

Actually, yes it does introduce an alternate view or a contradiction, but it can also be used to intone superiority towards a subject matter or person.

I didn't appreciate the medicinal nature of Rhubarb until a few years ago. If I'd known how helpful it is, I would've started growing it a long time ago.

> This is a whole article about how it's useful for a lot of things.

I just re-skimmed the article. I didn't notice much/any discussion the medicinal properties of rhubarb, just how 'forcing' rhubarb makes it extra-sweet, and that rhubarb is used to flavor gin and cheese too.

Someone should buy http://forcedrhubarb.com ... I'd buy some :p

I sell forced rhubarb on the internet.

Someone has actually just bought that!

Indeed they have, the whois was blank when I posted the comment and is now owned by someone from Oklahoma.

That sounds amazing if you can actually hear it growing! We have a small patch of rhubarb in our garden that I quite fancy making a simple gin out of (just by steeping the rhubarb in the gin).

Do it! I've not actually tried gin myself, but vodka infused with rhubarb for a couple of weeks (and a bit of sugar to taste) definitely works well.

Just don't do anything with the leaves! My parents used to have some rhubarb in the garden when I was young, and I had it drummed into me how poisonous the leaves were (not that I was the sort to go around eating random plants). Looks like "a 65 kg adult would need to eat 4 to 8 kg (9 to 18 lbs) [of leaves] to obtain a lethal dose"[0], although I guess you could still get pretty ill with much less.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhubarb

Nice :) Yeah I'd definitely be adding some sugar too. In autumn we make damson gin, which tastes really awesome.

I'll definitely try the rhubarb soon with it.

You can also hear corn grow.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76xEkEXI2a4

I've had better luck cooking some rhubarb with sugar and a bit of water, and using the resulting syrup to mix in with gin, or just as a cordial.

When cooking your rhubarb, try adding some ginger. Or grated orange zest. (Perhaps even both.)

and a spot of bicarb. It means you don't have to use as much sugar to make it palatable.

My favorite rhubarb recipe:

http://cooking-books.blogspot.com/2011/05/chicken-with-baked...

3 ingredients.

I've never heard/seen of the rhubarb stuff, but fast growing plants are amazing to watch. Duckweed grows so fast that you can see bubbles and twitches on the surface of the water.

I've planted some hops in my garden this spring and am really interested to watch that grow. Apparently up to 30cm per day is possible in ideal conditions. I'd just be amazed with 10cm per day.

Whaaaat?! Strawberry Rhubarb pie is a MUST try!

Strawberry rhubarb is pie lying about being cherry pie.

Cherry pie is an unfortunate shadow of strawberry rhubarb.

How dare you sir?

Pistols at dawn.

The candlelight is so dim I can't imagine it makes any difference, is it just for ambiance?

They actually grow in the dark by processing starches in roots. They candle are just used for viewing or picking. Fascinating process. I can't wait to try some of these one day.

"A notoriously fickle vegetable to harvest"

What? How? Its one of the easiest things to harvest ?!

I thought that was funny too. Once it's established, it keeps coming back, and you just need to take the stalks before it bolts.

Even if it bolts you just need to snap of the flowering stem, you can still continue picking, and it doesn't even bolt that easily. The only plant I know to reliably bolt is in a local allotment and is 6ft across, and 3 ft tall (that's the root mass, not the leaves).

I think it tends to bolt more reliably once it's well established. My father and grandmother both had big plantings of rhubarb, and they would bolt by midsummer. I don't know why we never harvested it after that, maybe because it wasn't as sweet? Not that it was ever particularly sweet in the first place, but for all that, so delicious.

I'm assuming they meant it was hard to harvest it when grown in this manner because it used to grow outside my grandma's barn without anyone doing anything for it.

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