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
Latin influence in English Old English scribes and christened to become the word "bless". Similarly "fullwiht" (literally, "full-being") and the verb "fullian" came to mean "baptism" and "to baptize" respectively, but probably originally referred to some kind of rite of passage. Whenever a suitable Old English substitute could not be found, a Latin word could be chosen instead, and many Latin words entered the Old English lexicon in this way. Such words include: "biscop" "bishop" from Latin "episcopus", Old English "teped" "carpet" from Latin "tapetum", and Old English "sigel" "brooch" from Latin "sigillum". Other words came in, even though an adequate Old English term