Quinine Tree Podcast: Extras

Here you will find intriguing extras: segments our producers weren't able to fit into a five-minute podcast as well as images, interesting facts and ways to get involved or in touch with biodiversity wherever you live.

Audio

Plants work very hard to prevent self-pollination. Curator Charlotte Taylor explains how Cinchona met this challenge. (Hint: It’s all in the shape of the flowers.)

Images

Quinine Tree

Photos by Kate Lawless, courtesy Missouri Botanical Garden

Climatron images  

Take a peek inside the Climatron, a geodesic dome greenhouse at the Missouri Botanical Garden which is home to tropical species, including Cinchona pubescens.

Photos courtesy of Missouri Botanical Garden

Facts

Cinchona belongs to the botanical family Rubiaeceae, the madders.Other members of the madder family include gardenia and coffee. 

Jesuit priests in Peru brought news of miraculous “Peruvian bark” as a cure for malaria.

What else might you encounter in a cloud forest in Central or South America?

Glasswing butterfly (Greta oto)

Three-toed sloth (Bradypodidae)

Resplendent quetzal (Pharomachrus mocinno)

Strawberry poison frog (Dendrobates pumilio)

Cougar (Puma concolor) 

Spectacled bear (Tremarctos ornatus) 

Sword-billed Hummingbird (Ensifera ensifera)  

Participate:

Have you traveled to the cloud forests of Central America or South America?

Consider adding your pictures to the EOL Flickr Group Pool; Once you have tagged your images, they’ll show up on the appropriate species page. You can also search the EOL Flickr pool for other user’s images that have been tagged “cloud forest,” then view them as a slideshow.

Share your plant pictures!

We want to know about the plants that you collect – both the live ones and the flattened ones. Send your photos to: education(at)eol.org.