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Rheum lhasaense is a plant from eastern Tibet belonging to the genus Rheum in family Polygonaceae. It is a mid-sized rhubarb species with triangular leaves and spherical fruit.
Initially it was only known to occur at a few sites near the city of Lhasa in eastern Tibet, China, where it grows on grassy slopes at 4200-4600m elevation, perhaps higher. In 2004 it was collected in Riwoqê County in far eastern Tibet.
It is inedible, but the roots are used in local Tibetian tradition as a medicinal plant for stomach aches. Uniquely, the roots of this species contain no trace of the anthraquinones for which other medicinal species of rhubarb popular in China are known for (such as R. palmatum or R. officinale). It does, however, contain a number of different chemicals known as resveratrol oligomers which may possibly have some future commercial use in the herbal supplement market as antioxidants, although the antioxidant activity is moderate to low. Two of these resveratrol oligomers are thus far (as of 2013) unique to this species. A Chinese patent was granted in 2014 for the use of these two chemicals to "reducing blood fat".
Himalayan Rhubarb · Rheum maximowiczii · Sikkim Rhubarb · Chinese rhubarb · Rheum palaestinum · Chinese rhubarb · Rhubarb · False Rhubarb · Syrian Rhubarb · Rheum webbianum · Rhubarb
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Rheum lhasaense by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts are shared under the same licence.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
