CINCHONA'CLE, a natural order of exogenous plants, consisting of trees, shrubs, and herbaceous plants, with simple, entire, opposite, or whorled leaves, and stipules between their foot-stalks. The calyx is adherent to the ovary; the corolla is tubular and regu lar, its segments are equal in number to those of the calyx, when the calyx is divided; the stamens arise from the corolla, anu are alternate with its segments. The ovary is surrounded by a disk, and usually two-celled; the style single, the fruit either splitting into two halves or not splitting at all, either dry or succulent.—This order has been very generally regarded by botanists as a sub-order of rubiaceee (q.v.), but far exceeds all the rest of that order, both in the number and importance of its species, of which from 2,500 to 3,000 are known, mostly tropical, and the remainder, with few exceptions, sub tropical. The C. are nearly allied to eaprifoliacea (woodbines or honeysuckles, etc.),
and interesting relations have been pointed out between them and umbellifertc. They constitute a very large part of the flora of tropical regions. Besides the genus cinchona (q.v.) and other genera producing febrifugal barks—exostemma, conclaminta, Pinckneya, Portlandia, etc.—the order produces a number of valuable medicinal plants, of ipecacuanha (q.v.) is the most important. The coffee (q v.) shrub belongs to it; and also the tree which yields gambir (q. v.). It produces a number of plants employed in dyeing, among Which are the chay root or choya, and some species of morinda. Some trees of this order yield valuable timber. Many of the species have beautiful and frag rant flowers; and some produce pleasant fruits, among which are the genipap (genipa Anzerican,a) of South America, the native each (sareocepluthes esculent us) of Sierra Leone, and the voavanga of Madagascar (ranguena eolulis).