Plant stem stems are asparagus, bamboo shoots, cactus pads or nopalitos, kohlrabi, and water chestnut. The spice, cinnamon is bark from a tree trunk. Gum arabic is an important food additive obtained from the trunks of "Acacia senegal" trees. Chicle, the main ingredient in chewing gum, is obtained from trunks of the chicle tree. Medicines obtained from stems include quinine from the bark of cinchona trees, camphor distilled from wood of a tree in the same genus that provides cinnamon, and the muscle relaxant curare from the bark of tropical vines. Wood is used in thousands of ways, e.g. buildings, furniture, boats,
Jesuit's bark long conflict over the good or harm effected by Peruvian Bark". The Spanish Jesuit missionaries in Peru were taught the healing power of the bark by natives, between 1620 and 1630, when a Jesuit at Loxa was indebted to its use for his cure from an attack of malaria ("Loxa Bark"). It was used at the recommendation of the Jesuits in 1630, when the Countess of Chinchon (Cinchon; the derivative is Cinchona, the appellation selected by Carl Linnaeus in 1742; Clements Markham preferred Chinchona), wife of the new viceroy, who had just arrived from Europe, was taken ill with malaria