Yorkshire's finest rhubarb is grown in the dark and picked by candlelight.
In a small patch of West Yorkshire, rhubarb roots spend two summers in the fields, then are moved into warm, pitch-black sheds for winter. They shoot up tender crimson stalks, harvested traditionally by candlelight because strong light halts growth. A night train once rushed the crop to London.
The Rhubarb Triangle is an area of about nine square miles between Wakefield, Morley and Rothwell, famous for forced rhubarb. The plant, native to Siberia, thrives in Yorkshire's wet, cold winters and long summers. The forcing method was developed in the early 1800s, and at one time West Yorkshire produced about 90 per cent of the world's winter forced rhubarb.
Forcing is a clever manipulation of the plant's own reserves. The roots grow in the fields for two years without being harvested, storing energy from the sun as carbohydrate. In November they are exposed to frost, then lifted into long, low sheds kept warm, once with cheap local coal and now with diesel, and completely dark. In the warmth the stored carbohydrate is converted to glucose and the plant pushes up stalks around 60 centimetres long. Without light the leaves stay yellow-green, while the smooth stalks glow crimson, more tender than summer rhubarb and with a sour-sweet flavour. The harvest is over by the end of March, and the exhausted roots go to compost.
It was once big business. Hundreds of small growers fertilised their fields with horse manure, city night soil and waste from local wool mills. From the late 19th century forced rhubarb was sent to London's Spitalfields and Covent Garden markets in time for Christmas, and to Paris. Before 1939, a special Great Northern Railway express left Ardsley every weekday night in season, carrying up to 200 tons a day at its peak.
Tastes changed after the Second World War as more exotic fruit became available, and a rail strike in 1962 helped end the rhubarb express. But a dozen growers fought to protect their product, and in 2010 Yorkshire Forced Rhubarb received Protected Designation of Origin status, alongside the likes of Stilton and champagne. Wakefield now celebrates with an annual rhubarb festival every February.
Source: Wikipedia — Rhubarb Triangle · Text summarised from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)
