Quinine Tree (Cinchona officinalis)

Cinchona officinalis, commonly called the quinine tree, is a shrub or small tree of the coffee family Rubiaceae with rugose bark and branchlets covered in fine hairs, native to the wet montane forests of Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia between about sixteen hundred and twenty seven hundred meters elevation, and it is Peru national tree. Its bark contains quinine and related alkaloids, including cinchonine, cinchonidine and quinidine, and for centuries the bark served as the principal anti-fever agent used to prevent and treat malaria before modern pharmaceuticals existed. Although synthetic and semi-synthetic drugs, many of them derived from Cinchona alkaloids, have since replaced the bark in direct medical use, the tree remains historically significant as a bridge between traditional botanical medicine and the development of modern pharmaceutical chemistry.