Rhubarb cultivars have gained the Royal Horticultural Society’s Award of Garden Merit:- "Rhubarb" originally comes from the two Greek words for rhubarb. "Rheon" from the Persian "rewend", later became the Latin word "rheum", meaning rhubarb. The other Greek word is "rha", an ancient name for the Volga River in Russian, where rhubarb was cultivated, having been introduced there from China via the Silk Road. In medieval Latin, "rheon" and "rha" became "rheum barbarum", literally "foreign rhubarb" or "strange rhubarb", and evolved later into "rheubarbarum". Most likely, the English word "rhubarb" entered the language via the French word "rhubarbe" brought over by
Vulgar Latin vocabulary ( 'knee joint' ), originally a veterinary term only, replaced the classical Latin word for leg ("crus") in most Romance languages. (cf. Fr. jambe, It. gamba). Cooking terms were also often borrowed from Greek sources; a calque based on a Greek term was "ficatum (iecur)" (goose's liver fattened with figs, see foie gras for more information), with the participle "ficatum" becoming the common word for liver in Vulgar Latin (cf. Sp. "hígado", Fr. "foie", It. "fegato", Pt "fígado", Romanian "ficat"). Important religious terms were also drawn from religious texts written in Greek, such as "episcopus" (bishop), "presbyter" (priest), "martyr" etc.