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
Cinchona and Louis Bouger that was sent to Ecuador to determine the length of a degree of the 1/4 of meridian arc in the neighbourhood of the equator, was published by the French Academy of Sciences. In it he identified three separate species. The birth of homeopathy was based on cinchona bark testing. The founder of homeopathy, Samuel Hahnemann, when translating William Cullen's "Materia medica", noticed Cullen had written that Peruvian bark was known to cure intermittent fevers. Hahnemann took daily a large, rather than homeopathic, dose of Peruvian bark. After two weeks, he said he felt malaria-like symptoms. This idea