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,
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