Unakite Jasper Identification Guide

What Unakite Jasper Looks Like

"Unakite jasper" is a trade name for unakite - an altered granite, not a true jasper. Despite the name it is the same mottled pink-and-green rock: salmon-pink orthoclase feldspar, pistachio-to-olive green epidote, and gray-to-clear quartz in a granular, interlocking texture. The "jasper" label is marketing for tumbled stones and beads; mineralogically it is a granitoid. It is opaque, takes a smooth polish, and shows patchy color rather than the swirls or bands of real jasper.

Step-by-Step Field-ID Checklist

1. Spot the pink-and-green mottling - the defining unakite signature.
2. Identify components: pink feldspar, green epidote, gray quartz.
3. Look at texture. Grainy interlocking crystals (granitic), NOT the homogeneous microcrystalline body of real jasper.
4. Hardness test. ~6-7; quartz portions scratch glass.
5. Check for feldspar cleavage flashes - true jasper has none.
6. Confirm no banding/swirling of the kind seen in agate-family jaspers.

Key Diagnostic Tests

• Mohs hardness: ~6-7 overall.
• Streak: White to pale.
• Cleavage/fracture: Feldspar cleavage present; quartz conchoidal; no rock-wide cleavage.
• Magnetism: None.
• Acid: No reaction.
• Density: ~2.85-3.0 g/cm3.

Common Look-Alikes

• True jasper (red/green): A microcrystalline quartz - uniform, waxy, breaks conchoidally, with NO visible feldspar crystals or granitic grain. This is the key separation: jasper is fine-grained silica; unakite jasper is coarse-grained granite.
• Ordinary granite: Similar texture but lacks the pistachio epidote green.
• Ruby in zoisite: Pink-and-green but with hard ruby (Mohs 9) and black hornblende.
• Epidosite: Predominantly green with little pink.

If you can see individual pink feldspar and green epidote grains under a loupe and feldspar cleavage glints, it is unakite, not jasper.

Where It Is Found

Same sources as unakite: the type locality is the Unaka Range of the Appalachians (North Carolina/Tennessee), with material from Virginia, the Lake Superior region, South Africa, Brazil, and China, commonly as river cobbles and glacial cobbles.