Page:The family kitchen gardener - containing plain and accurate descriptions of all the different species and varieties of culinary vegetables (IA familykitchengar56buis).pdf/116

 progress in their cultivation, within the past fifteen years, than this article, and we yet expect to see it cultivated by the hundred acres and brought to our market in wagon loads. The following sorts are all deserving of particular attention.

Tobolsk.—A very early, small, red variety, of excellent flavor for an early crop or forcing. It grows in very rich ground to about eighteen inches or two feet long.

Washington.—A green variety, very much spotted on the footstalks, grows two feet long, and is a second early sort. Giant. A very large green variety, with round stalks, that will grow four feet long, and nearly the thickness of a man’s wrist. It is cultivated in England to an immense extent, as a late variety, to supply the market the whole Summer.

Mammoth.—This sort was raised by me from the seed of the former. It grows from three to four feet long, with stalks of great thickness, of a flat shape. It has taken the prize as the best Rhubarb, at the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society’s meetings, the past three years. It is of excellent flavor.

Myatt’s Victoria.—This is a red variety, of great excellence and richly flavored, grows very strong, equal to the Giant, and much earlier than that variety; is richly deserving of extensive culture.

Large Early Red.—A seedling, by me, from the Victoria. It is even larger than its parent, comes full eight days earlier, and will prove the best Early Rhubarb we have yet had brought to our notice. The stalks are three feet long, and are quite fit for use before the leaf begins to expand. It is richly flavored. It may be observed that the red stalked sorts are generally earlier than those with green stems.

Rheum palmatum, or Palmated-leaved Rhubarb, is the variety that is cultivated in China and Tartary for its roots, and in some countries another species, the Undulatum, is grown for the same purpose. There is no doubt that all the other varieties possess the same medicinal properties when they attain sufficient age, which is allowed to be seven years.