Cinchona pubescens

Cinchona pubescens
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Plantae
(unranked):	Angiosperms
(unranked):	Eudicots
(unranked):	Asterids
Order:	Gentianales
Family:	Rubiaceae
Genus:	Cinchona
Species:	C. pubescens
Binomial name
Cinchona pubescens Vahl, 1790

Cinchona pubescens is known for its bark's high quinine content- and has similar uses to Cinchona officinalis in the production of quinine, most famously used for treatment of malaria (Kinyuy et al. 1993). Its native range spans Costa Rica, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia. In Ecuador, C. pubescens is distributed within an altitude from 300 to 3900 m and has the widest distribution of all Cinchona species (Acosta-Solis 1945; Missouri Botanical Garden specimen database 2002) Its distribution is at well documented by the Missouri Botanic Garden's Nomenclatural Data Base w3TROPICOS.

Planted outside of its native range on tropical islands it has become an invasive species ^[1]. In Galapagos it has become a dominant species in the formerly shrub dominated Miconia and Fern-Sedge zones (sensu Wiggins and Porter 1971) on Santa Cruz Island (Buddenhagen & Yánez 2005; Buddenhagen et al. 2004; Jäger 1999; Kastdalen 1982; Lawesson 1990; Macdonald et al. 1988; Mauchamp 1997; Tye 2000; and see more references below). It is also invasive in Hawaii on Maui and the Big Island ^[2]

It has been subject to control in the Galapagos National Park [1] to reduce its impacts using a variety of methods (Buddenhagen et al. 2004), but controlling it over its total range on Santa Cruz island would cost several million US dollars according to research done through the Charles Darwin Foundation [2] (Buddenhagen and Yanez 2005).

References

1. ^ (Invasive Species Specialist Group
2. ^ Invasive species in Hawaii.

Sources

• Acosta Solis, M. 1945. Botánica de las Cinchonas. Pages 29-55 in M. Acosta Solis, editor. Flora. Instituto Ecuadoriano de Ciencias Naturales, Quito.
• Acosta Solis, M. 1945. Habitat y distribución de las Cinchonas en el Ecuador.
• Pages 8-19 in M. Acosta Solis, editor. Flora. Instituto Ecuadoriano de Ciencias Naturales, Quito.
• Buddenhagen, C., and P. Yánez. 2005. The cost of quinine Cinchona pubescens control on Santa Cruz Island, Galapagos. Galapagos Research 63:32-36.
• Buddenhagen, C. E., J. L. Rentería, M. Gardener, S. R. Wilkinson, M. Soria, P. Yánez, A. Tye, and R. Valle. 2004. The Control of a Highly Invasive Tree Cinchona pubescens in Galapagos. Weed Technology 18:1194-1202.
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• Gibbs, J. P., W. G. Shriver, and H. Vargas. 2003. An assessment of a Galapagos Rail population over thirteen years (1986 to 2000). Journal of Field Ornithology 7*:136-140.
• Jäger, H. 1999. Impact of the introduced tree Cinchona pubescens Vahl. on the native flora of the highlands of Santa Cruz Island (Galapagos Islands). Page 102. University of Oldenburg, Oldenburg.
• /Kastdalen, A. 1982. Changes in the biology of Santa Cruz 1935-1965. Noticias de Galapagos 35:7-12.
• Kinyuy, W. C., D. Palevitch, and E. Putievsky. 1993. Through integrated biomedical\ethnomedical preparations and ethnotaxonomy, effective malaria and diabetic treatments have evolved. International symposium on medicinal and aromatic plants, Tiberias on the Sea of Galilee, Israel:205-214.
• Lawesson, J. E. 1990. Alien plants in the Galapagos Islands, a summary. Pages 15-20 in J. E. Lawesson, O. Hamann, G. Rogers, G. Reck, and H. Ochoa, editors. Botanical research and management in Galapagos. Missouri Botanical Garden, St. Louis, MO.
• Macdonald, I. A. W., L. Ortiz, J. E. Lawesson, and J. B. Nowak. 1988. The invasion of highlands in Galapagos by the red quinine-tree Cinchona succirubra. Environmental Conservation 15:215-220.
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