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 (which originally meant "about/concerning", weakened to "of") as early as the 2nd century BC . Exceptions of remaining genitive forms are some pronouns, many fossilized combinations like sayings, some proper names, and certain terms related to the church. For example, French ' ("Thursday") < Old French "juesdi" < Vulgar Latin ; Spanish "es " ("it is necessary") < ; terms like , ; and Italian ' ("earthquake") < as well as names like "Paoli", "Pieri". The dative case lasted longer than the genitive, even though Plautus, in the 2nd century BC, already shows some instances of substitution by the construction