Bark (botany) rope, used for example in the rigging of Viking age longships. Among the commercial products made from bark are cork, cinnamon, quinine (from the bark of Cinchona) and aspirin (from the bark of willow trees). The bark of some trees notably oak ("Quercus robur") is a source of tannic acid, which is used in tanning. Bark chips generated as a by-product of lumber production are often used in bark mulch in western North America. Bark is important to the horticultural industry since in shredded form it is used for plants that do not thrive in ordinary soil, such as epiphytes.
Cinchona was finally described carefully by the astronomer Charles Marie de la Condamine who visited Quito in 1735 on a quest to measure an arc of the meridian. The species he described, "Cinchona officinalis," was however found to be of little therapeutic value. The first living plants seen in Europe were "C. calisaya" plants grown at the "Jardin des Plantes" from seeds collected by Hugh Algernon Weddell from Bolivia in 1846. José Celestino Mutis, physician to the Viceroy of Nueva Granada, Pedro Messia de la Cerda gathered information on cinchona in Colombia from 1760 and wrote a manuscript "El Arcano de