Starts This Wednesday!! Register Now!
Among the thousands of tree species humans have used for medicine, few have had a greater global impact than Cinchona (Cinchona officinalis), the evergreen tree native to the humid forests of Ecuador and Peru. For centuries, Indigenous Quechua communities used its bark for healing, and the compound quinine, extracted from the tree later, became the world’s first effective treatment for malaria, saving millions of lives.
Yet quinine isn’t produced by trees for humans. Like many plant chemicals, it evolved as part of the tree’s own survival strategy. Quinine is a bitter alkaloid that helps defend the tree against insects and pathogens, protecting its tissues from being eaten or infected. This illustrates a profound ecological principle that many of the compounds humans use as medicines originate as plant defense mechanisms shaped by evolution.
To understand this deeper intelligence of life, namely, how trees engineer chemistry, soil, water, and the atmosphere, please join us for our upcoming course, Emergent Intelligence of Trees: How Symbiosis Shapes Living Systems, led by Restoration Biologist Jim Laurie.
Course begins Wednesday, March 18 Two live sessions each week: 12 PM ET or 7 PM ET (choose either one or both)
Join us to explore how trees from rainforest giants like Cinchona to forests across the globe quietly shape the systems that sustain life on Earth.
Posted: March 13, 2026