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Rheum officinale; photograph Kurt Stüber, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SAKurt Stüber, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Rheum officinale Baill.

Tibetan rhubarb; Chinese rhubarb

Polygonaceae · China South-Central, China North-Central +1

No habitat climate
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Rheum officinale, photograph Salicyna, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia CommonsRheum officinale, photograph Salicyna, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia CommonsRheum officinale, photograph 阿橋 HQ, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia CommonsRheum officinale, photograph Krzysztof Ziarnek, Kenraiz, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia CommonsRheum officinale, photograph Krzysztof Ziarnek, Kenraiz, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia CommonsRheum officinale, photograph Drlectin, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons 12 photographs ›

Summary

Rheum officinale, the Chinese rhubarb, or Indian rhubarb is a rhubarb from the family Polygonaceae native to western China and Tibet. In Chinese it is called yào yòng dà huáng (Chinese: 药用大黄), literally meaning medicinal rhubarb.

Quoted from Wikipedia, "Rheum officinale", CC BY-SA 4.0.

Cultivation

Nothing derived: no habitat climate for this species.

Climate across the habitat

No habitat climate can be derived: 79 in-range records, none placed to within 10 km. 79 of the 79 in-range records are placed to worse than 10 km, or to no stated accuracy and fewer than three decimals or by something other than a person's observation, and cannot place a climate cell, though they count for the map and its marker.

Natural habitat

Native range as published by WCVP; the marker is where the records are densest and decides nothing.
Openly licensed records inside the range, framed on where they fall.
NativeChina South-Central, China North-Central, China Southeast · introduced: Great Britain, Czechoslovakia, Laos, Vietnam · regions are the level-3 units of the World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions, as Kew's World Checklist records ranges, some under historical names such as Yugoslavia or Czechoslovakia (how).
Map marker30.954, 108.832 · in the densest population, 35 records (44% of those in range)
Kew's description“perennial” · “temperate” · quoted from WCVP, RBG Kew (CC BY 4.0); not derived here
Evidence usedThe map marker rests on all 79 georeferenced records inside the native range; the map shows only the 28 openly licensed ones, which alone would put the marker 35 km away. 57 records outside the WCVP native range not used. No climate across the range is derived for this species. 79 in-range records are placed to worse than 10 km, or with no stated accuracy (admitted only as a person's observation to three decimals), and stay on the map but off the climate.
How this section is made
The map marker: the openly licensed record nearest the middle of the densest 1° population inside the densest 2° block of the 79 in-range records; it decides nothing. Records outside the native range, living specimens and records marked introduced are not used; which records count.

Photographs

Rheum officinale, photograph 1did not loadRheum officinale, photograph 2did not loadRheum officinale, photograph 3did not loadRheum officinale, photograph 4did not loadRheum officinale, photograph 5did not loadRheum officinale, photograph 6did not load

Photographs: Salicyna, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (2); 阿橋 HQ, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons; Krzysztof Ziarnek, Kenraiz, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (2); Drlectin, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Other Rheum 21 in the reference

Rheum acuminatum Rheum acuminatum Himalayan rhubarb Photo: CC BY, Morten RossRheum alexandrae Rheum alexandrae Polygonaceae Photo: CC BY, Wang.QGRheum australe Rheum australe Himalayan rhubarb Photo: CC BY, Sagnik Dutta RoyRheum compactum Rheum compactum Polygonaceae Photo: CC BY, ivansemenkovRheum cordatum Rheum cordatum Polygonaceae Photo: CC BY, Alexander Dubynin Rheum delavayi Polygonaceae Rheum fedtschenkoi Rheum fedtschenkoi Polygonaceae Photo: CC BY-SA, User:BotBln Rheum forrestii Polygonaceae Rheum maximowiczii Rheum maximowiczii Polygonaceae Photo: CC BY, Вячеслав Юсупов Rheum moorcroftianum Polygonaceae Rheum nobile Rheum nobile Sikkim rhubarb Photo: CC0, author not statedRheum palmatum Rheum palmatum Ornamental rhubarb Photo: CC BY, Morten Ross all 22 ›

Names & registers

Also known as Rheum baillonii; Rheum pichonii. (GBIF Backbone)

GBIFPOWOIPNIWFOWikidataWikipediaiNaturalist

The record

Family
Polygonaceae
Described by
Baill.
Native to
China South-Central, China North-Central, China Southeast
Wild records
79 in range · 28 open

Every figure here is derived from public data by a stated rule and names its source; nothing about this species is written for its page by a person or by AI, apart from the marked, credited quotations. How →

Where this page came from built 2026-10-22
GBIF species record gbif.species answeredasked 2026-10-22
GBIF synonyms gbif.synonyms answeredasked 2026-10-22
GBIF common names gbif.vernacular answeredasked 2026-10-22names fetched 2026-10-22
WCVP native range wcvp.distribution answeredas of 2026-06-04
GBIF occurrence records gbif.occurrences answeredas of 2026-10-21GBIF occurrence download https://doi.org/10.15468/dl.hbdw64, of 2026-10-21; 7 records within 1 km of a botanic garden, herbarium or zoo left out (5 at a botanic garden or arboretum, 2 at a zoo; Wikidata's list)
Habitat climate climate nothing to reportasked 2026-10-2279 in-range records, none placed to within 10 km
Wikidata wikidata answeredasked 2026-10-22
Wikipedia wikipedia answeredasked 2026-10-22
iNaturalist photographs, wild inat.photos.wild nothing to reportasked 2026-10-22from iNaturalist's open data of 2026-09-27: research-grade observations with an open-licence photograph, the 24 whose photographs iNaturalist received last (the open data holds no votes); filled 2026-10-22
iNaturalist photographs, cultivated inat.photos.cultivated not asked
GBIF media gbif.media nothing to reportasked 2026-10-22
Wikimedia Commons commons answeredasked 2026-10-22
OpenAlex papers openalex not askednot yet asked for this reference; a later fill takes the papers from OpenAlex's snapshot

Every source is recorded as having answered, reported nothing, refused, failed, not been asked, or answered twice where one answer is taken (“not taken: two items answered”), and, for a source asked when this page was built, when: the figures are as the source held them that day; a source read from a file (Kew's World Checklist, a GBIF download) says "as of" the file's day instead; a row carried from an earlier build of the page names that build instead. Only “nothing to report” is ever shown as an absence. Records came from 27 datasets via GBIF.org; each carries its own licence.

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