Rheum ribes

 ( Ribes ) 

In 1936 Losina-Losinskaja, in Komarov's Flora SSSR, classifies this species in section Ribesiformia, in which she also places R. maximowiczii, R. fedtschenkoi, Rheum cordatum, Rheum hissaricum and R. macrocarpum (and R. lobatum and R. plicatum, which are both now seen as synonyms of R. macrocarpum).

One of the first European works to write about this plant unambiguously was the Viertes Kreutterbuech - darein vil schoene und frembde Kreutter of 1576 by Leonhard Rauwolf, the first modern European botanist to travel through the Levant and Mesopotamia. The Viertes Kreutterbuech is one of the first herbarium – the first with plants collected outside of Europe – and contains Rauwolf's notes on the pressed plants displayed. Rauwolf calls the plant Ribes arabum and saw it growing in Lebanon and Palestine. He says the rob ribes of Serapion is made from the young flowering stalk.

In the 1623 Pinax Theatri Botanici, Gaspard Bauhin attempts to sort all the plant names hitherto published. In this work he organises all Ribes and Ribes species known at the time into 13 species, the twelfth of which is Rheum ribes, which Bauhin calls Ribes arabicum. Bauhin bases this on the work of Rauwolf, but also Carolus Clusius (who calls it Ribes legitima arabum), Camerarius ( Ribes serapionis), Rembert Dodoens ( Ribes serapionis foliis oxylapathi) and Pierre Belon.

In 1732, Johann Jacob Dillenius published his Hortus Elthamensis – a book of rare plants grown in London – which describes this plant. He calls it a type of Lapathum (now Rumex), but mentions that it is known as Ribes arabicum. Dillenius obtained seeds in 1726 from William Sherard, who brought them from Lebanon in 1724. He mentions that it was only grown elsewhere in Europe in Leyden, from an older source.

The specific epithet ribes is thus derived via Serapion from the Arabic word rībās (ريباس), referring to the Syrian rhubarb. Flora Hibernica (1836) (Name, Ribes, a word applied by the Arabic Physicians to a species of Rhubarb, Rheum Ribes.) The New Latin word ribes (currant) was corrupted from the Arabic word rībās by Europeans in the Renaissance, possibly due confusion with the original description of the bunches of berries on its panicle of fruit, with currants, a new crop at the time. R. ribes, unlike many other species of rhubarb, has a fleshy, succulent epicarp around its seeds.

The generic name Rheum is derived from the Greek rheon, mentioned by Dioscorides as a name for medicinal rhubarb; the word rheon is itself thought to be derived from the (old) Persian rewend, which possibly referred to this species.