Are Celery And Rhubarb Related

The other day, I was chopping celery for a soup, feeling very adult and organized, when my phone buzzed. It was a photo from my friend Sarah, who was proudly holding up a giant, ruby-red stalk of rhubarb from her garden. “Look at my celery’s cousin!” she captioned it. I stared at the two stalks—my boring green one and her Instagram-worthy crimson spear—and honestly, I had to pause. Are these two even related, or is my friend just messing with me?

Let’s get the short answer out of the way: no, celery and rhubarb are not botanical cousins. Not even distant, holiday-card-sending relatives. They are from two completely different plant families. Rhubarb is a member of the Polygonaceae family (the same crew as buckwheat and sorrel—fancy, right?). Celery, on the other hand, is a proud member of the Apiaceae family, which includes carrots, parsley, and dill. So, the only thing they share is a love of long stems and a knack for confusing people at farmers' markets. (You are not alone in this confusion, I promise.)

But here’s the funny part: they look so similar in shape and texture that our brains just refuse to accept they aren't siblings. I’m talking about that satisfying crunch when you snap a stalk—both do it, both sound like a tiny twig breaking. And they even share a similar “stringy” character that makes you curse under your breath when you pull a tough piece out of your teeth. This is where the confusion really takes hold. The visual trick is so strong that many people (including a certain past-me) believe rhubarb is just “sour, red celery that somehow got cursed into a pie.”

Why We Keep Confusing Them

It’s all about the culinary lies, my friend. In the kitchen, we treat them as if they were second cousins—we chop them, stew them, and even eat them with sugar. But while celery goes into savory soups and salads like a humble workhorse, rhubarb gets dolled up with strawberries and sugar and thrown into a dessert. That’s a huge personality difference. Imagine putting celery in a pie? You’d start a riot. Yet, when you look at a raw stalk of rhubarb, your brain goes, “Oh, that’s just angrier celery.”

There’s also the cultural trick. Think about it: how often have you seen a rhubarb stalk next to a celery stalk in a grocery store display? Never, because they’re usually in different sections! Rhubarb hangs out with the berries (because it’s sweet and tart), while celery chills with the carrots and onions (because it’s savory). But your brain remembers them both as “that long, crunchy green/red stick.” It’s a perfect storm for botanical identity theft. I once saw a cooking video where someone tried to substitute celery for rhubarb in a crumble. It went poorly. (Don’t do that. Seriously. Don’t.)

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The Botanical Facts (But Make It Fun)

Let’s break down the nerdy stuff without putting you to sleep. Rhubarb is technically a vegetable that’s used like a fruit in cooking. Its leaves are poisonous (full of oxalic acid), so you only eat the stalk—and you should cook it, because raw rhubarb is so tart it will make your face implode. Celery, meanwhile, is a vegetable vegetable—you can eat it raw, cooked, or even as a garnish for your Bloody Mary. Its leaves are totally fine. That’s a pretty big gap in “family resemblance,” don’t you think?

Another fun fact: rhubarb is a perennial, meaning it comes back year after year like that one friend who always shows up unannounced. Celery is a biennial, meaning it lives for two years and then dies dramatically. So, rhubarb is the stubborn, tart aunt who stays forever, and celery is the boring houseguest who leaves after a weekend. Not a lot of genes shared there.

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The Irony of the "String" Thing

Here’s the real kicker: the thing that makes them feel related—those stringy, fibrous bits you have to pull off—is actually a result of convergent evolution. Both plants developed those tough, stringy strands for structural support, but they did it completely on their own, in separate branches of the plant family tree. It’s like how a bat and a bird both have wings, but one is a mammal and one is a bird. They look similar because they do the same job, not because they’re family. So, next time you peel a stringy stalk, you can feel smart knowing you’re experiencing a botanical coincidence, not a genetic link.

So, to answer your friend’s caption: no, Sarah, your rhubarb is not celery’s cousin. It’s more like a distant neighbor who borrowed a similar haircut. But honestly? I still think of them as a quirky duo—one goes in the soup, the other in the pie, and both will forever hold a tiny, confusing place in our hearts. The next time you see them side-by-side at the market, just nod at them. They know. They know.