Ingredients beginning with C

Candelilla wax is boiled off the stems of a leafless desert shrub that coats itself to keep from drying out, and it is the usual plant-derived stand-in for beeswax; its international trade is controlled under CITES.

Near-pure elemental carbon made by burning hydrocarbons under controlled conditions: the densest black available to a formulator, certified batch by batch in the United States and carrying a separate European authorisation for its nano form.

A deep crimson lake pigment made from the dried bodies of the female cochineal insect, and the only red of animal origin still in routine industrial use in cosmetics.

Carnauba is the hard, high-melting wax a Brazilian fan palm secretes onto its fronds to survive the dry season, and in cosmetics it is the ingredient that stops a lipstick going soft in a warm room.

Pressed from the seed of Ricinus communis, castor oil is the one common vegetable oil that will dissolve the staining dyes used in lipstick, which is how it became the liquid backbone of the bullet.

Cinnabar is the natural ore of mercury sulphide and the source of the pigment vermilion: a dense scarlet mineral spread on Copper Age bodies, Roman statues and, on contested evidence, Roman faces.

A volatile silicone ring of five repeating units, used as a carrier that spreads a product evenly and then evaporates, and now restricted in European cosmetics on environmental rather than dermatological grounds.