Cinchona ledgeriana" had a yield of 8 to 13 percent quinine in bark grown in Dutch Indonesia which effectively out-competed the British Indian production. It was only later that the English saw the value and sought to obtain the seeds of "C. ledgeriana" from the Dutch. During World War II, the Japanese conquered Java and the United States lost access to the cinchona plantations that supplied war-critical quinine medication. Botanical expeditions – called Cinchona Missions – were launched in 1942-1944 to explore promising areas of South America in an effort to locate cinchona species that contained quinine and could be harvested
Bark pocket indicator of air pollutants during which the time they formed. They can be used to monitor heavy metals such as lead and copper, as dust or other matter deposited on the bark at the time of formation is still present. One study analysed the amount of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) present in bark pockets as a historical record of air quality, possible due to the interaction between PAHs and lipids in the bark. Bark pocket Bark pockets can be formed by inosculation, formation of a tree fork, encapsulation of a branch, joining together of an uneven trunk, or encapsulation of