Cinchona pubescens hence its nickname the red quinine tree. Its flowers form in large panicles. They are pink and fragrant, while in the Galapagos they are light pink. "C. pubescens" has the widest distribution of all "Cinchona" species, with the native range spanning Costa Rica, Panama, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia. In Ecuador it is distributed within an altitude from . It also grows well in volcanic soil with high nutrient levels. C. pubescens is a resilient species that is able to recover from even extreme damage. If the tree is felled but the stump is left, it can grow back
Bark (botany) the ground to where the main branching starts) of the tree. Bark tissues make up by weight between 10–20% of woody vascular plants and consists of various biopolymers, tannins, lignin, suberin, suberan and polysaccharides. Up to 40% of the bark tissue is made of lignin which forms an important part of a plant providing structural support by crosslinking between different polysaccharides, such as cellulose. Condensed tannin, which are in fairly high concentration in bark tissue, is thought to inhibit decomposition. It could be due to this factor that the degradation of lignin is far less pronounced in bark tissue than