Ceylon Cinnamon: The Sri Lankan Bark, Its Grades, Flavor and Low Coumarin

Cut a stick of Ceylon cinnamon crosswise and it looks like a cut cigar: thin, papery layers of bark rolled one inside another. It’s the milder, more layered of the two main cinnamons, and it carries only traces of coumarin, the compound that makes heavy daily use of cassia a concern for European regulators. Most of the cinnamon sold in North America is cassia, though, and once it’s ground, the two are hard to tell apart. Ceylon is the dried inner bark of Cinnamomum verum, which the U.S. National Institutes of Health calls the “true” cinnamon.¹

At a glance

What it is

Ceylon cinnamon is one of at least four trees sold as cinnamon. The other three make up the trade group called cassia: Chinese, Indonesian and Vietnamese (Saigon) cassia.⁸ For a side-by-side, see Ceylon vs. cassia cinnamon and Saigon vs. Ceylon cinnamon.

The difference starts with the bark. PROSEA describes it on the tree as about 10 mm thick and strongly aromatic. The bark you buy is no more than 0.5 cm thick and a dull pale brown. It’s harvested in the wet season, when the cambium is active. Peelers pack the strips together overnight for a slight fermentation, scrape off the outer layers, slide smaller pieces inside longer ones to build compound quills, and dry them in the shade until they turn yellowish-brown.⁴ Germany’s Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR) points out the result: cut a Ceylon stick crosswise and it looks like a cut cigar.⁹

Flavor and aroma

Ceylon cinnamon tastes sweet, warm and gently woody, with a softer bite than cassia and a faint clove-like edge. The EU’s import-promotion agency CBI calls Ceylon the milder, finer type and cassia rougher and less fragrant.¹⁰

The chemistry fits. PROSEA puts Ceylon bark oil at 50–75% cinnamaldehyde, with eugenol at 5–18%.⁴ Eugenol is the main component of clove bud oil (70–90% there).¹¹ Chinese cassia bark oil, by contrast, is 70–95% cinnamaldehyde with only traces of eugenol, and Indonesian cassia oil has no eugenol.⁸ PROSEA also says the flavor of Ceylon bark depends on its steam-volatile oil together with trace amounts of coumarin.

Origin and history

Where it grows wild. Kew gives the native range of C. verum as Sri Lanka.³ PROSEA says it grows wild in south-west India, western Sri Lanka and the Tenasserim Hills of Myanmar.⁴ The two references disagree on India and Myanmar, so we’re giving you both.

The colonial trade. PROSEA dates the Portuguese occupation of Sri Lanka to 1536 and says the Dutch took over in 1656, each setting up a near-monopoly on the trade.⁴ A Leiden University history of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) fills in the sequence: a 1638 treaty between the Dutch and the king of Kandy, and the fall of Jaffna, the last Portuguese stronghold, in 1658. The VOC relied on a specialized caste of cinnamon peelers, and for a long time the bark came from wild trees. Dutch rule on Ceylon ended after war broke out between the Dutch Republic and England in 1795.¹²

When cultivation began. Sources differ:

Java tried growing it too, from 1825. It went well at first, then declined quickly.⁴

You’ll see plenty of claims that Ceylon cinnamon was used in Egyptian embalming, that Pliny valued it above silver, and that Arab traders kept its source secret until the 16th century. We couldn’t find a solid source for any of them. We couldn’t trace the claim that it was prized as a meat preservative, either.

Production and trade

Sri Lanka produces the most Ceylon cinnamon bark and the best quality, mainly as quills. PROSEA, citing FAO, puts Sri Lanka’s harvested area at 24,000 ha in 1998, and gives exports of about 6,000 t a year without a date. Oils are a much smaller trade: from 1987 to 1992, Sri Lanka exported less than 3 t of bark oil and about 115 t of leaf oil a year.⁴ Sri Lanka’s Export Development Board (EDB) says the country produces almost 90% of the cinnamon on the world market, though it gives no year or method.⁵ It’s grown on a smaller scale in southern India, the Seychelles and Madagascar. We haven’t checked a current production series for C. verum from FAO or another statistical body.

Mexico is a big buyer. Cinnamon tops Sri Lanka’s exports to Mexico, at USD 91 million in 2025.¹³ In 2022, Ceylon Cinnamon became Sri Lanka’s first product with an EU Protected Geographical Indication, according to CBI.¹⁰

How it is used

Cinnamon is used mainly in home cooking, whole and ground. According to CBI, in Europe it goes largely into baked goods, sweets, hot drinks and mulled wine, and it’s a key ingredient in Indian garam masala and masala chai. (CBI is talking about cinnamon in general here, not just Ceylon.)¹⁰

Ceylon shines where cinnamon is the main flavor and you want a gentler note: custards and rice puddings, poached fruit, Mexican-style hot chocolate and coffee, and light syrups. Its thin quills break up easily in a spice grinder, so it’s handy to grind fresh. For when to use sticks and when to use ground, see ground cinnamon vs. cinnamon sticks. If a dish has gone too far, see too much cinnamon.

Swapping with cassia. PROSEA says cinnamon and cassia barks are interchangeable in many uses.⁸ Cassia will come across stronger and hotter, so start with less. Going the other way, you may need more Ceylon for the same punch. None of the sources gives a tested ratio, so take that as a starting point. See cinnamon substitutes.

Buying and quality

Grades. The EDB lists four main grades of Ceylon quills, set by quill diameter: Alba, Continental, Mexican and Hamburg. Alba, the priciest, is 6 mm.⁵ The EDB page doesn’t give diameters for the other three. PROSEA describes Ceylon grading as more elaborate than for any other cinnamon. Forms include scraped and unscraped bark, compound and simple quills, quillings (broken quills), featherings (bark from twigs and twisted shoots) and chips (trimmings), and quills are further graded by bark thickness.⁴

Knowing what you have. Whole quills are easy to spot by their many thin, rolled layers. Ground cinnamon is another story. BfR says consumers can hardly tell ground Ceylon and cassia apart, and advises looking for “Ceylon cinnamon” on the pack.⁹ In the U.S., FDA’s spice list names it “Cinnamon, Ceylon” (Cinnamomum zeylanicum).² CBI notes that ground cinnamon is more open to microbial contamination and fraud than whole.¹⁰

Lead. Since 2024, FDA has warned consumers about specific lots of ground cinnamon sold in the U.S. that contained elevated lead, with results from 2.03 to 7.68 parts per million in its summary.¹⁴ The alerts list brands and lots, not species. The brand list is on our cinnamon page.

Storage

Keep quills and ground Ceylon cinnamon airtight, away from heat, light and moisture. PROSEA lists storage insects that attack quills, including Lasioderma serricorne.⁴ We found no shelf-life figure for Ceylon cinnamon from a regulator or standards body. Its smell is carried by volatile oil, so the easy test is to rub or break a piece. If the smell is faint, it’s faded.

Safety

Coumarin

Coumarin is the main reason people go looking for Ceylon. EFSA set a tolerable daily intake (TDI) of 0.1 mg of coumarin per kg of body weight and kept it in its 2008 review.¹⁵ BfR says relatively low doses can cause liver damage in a small group of especially sensitive people.⁹

Ceylon is low in coumarin, not free of it. Each figure belongs to the samples it was measured on:

Wang and colleagues found only traces of coumarin in C. verum bark and substantial amounts in all three cassia species.⁷ In a 2010 German study of 91 retail samples, cassia powder had up to 63 times more coumarin than Ceylon powder.¹⁶

For scale, by our math: a 60 kg adult’s TDI is 6 mg of coumarin a day. At the highest Sri Lankan commercial figure in the table (0.9 g/kg), that’s about 6.7 g of Ceylon cinnamon a day. At the authenticated-sample level (0.017 g/kg), it’s more than 300 g. At the BfR cassia average, the same adult hits the TDI at about 2 g a day.⁹ For the full coumarin picture, see Ceylon vs. cassia cinnamon.

Health claims

NCCIH says research doesn’t clearly support using cinnamon for any health condition, and that it’s unclear whether cinnamon supplements help with diabetes or weight loss.¹ A 2013 systematic review of Ceylon cinnamon specifically found reported effects in lab and animal studies but called the human data sparse.¹⁷ We’re not claiming Ceylon cinnamon treats or prevents any condition. None of the sources we reviewed supported claims that its compounds improve circulation, lower blood pressure or slow Alzheimer’s disease.

Substitutes and comparisons

• Cinnamon substitutes
• Ceylon vs. cassia cinnamon
• Saigon vs. Ceylon cinnamon
• Cassia cinnamon, Saigon cinnamon and Korintje cinnamon
• Cinnamon, the overview
• Cloves vs. cinnamon and cinnamon vs. nutmeg