Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ rocks, minerals, crystals, and gemstones — with properties, formation, colors, hardness, and how to tell them apart.
Grey Moonstone
A smoky gray feldspar moonstone, often called new moon stone, showing a silvery-blue adularescent sheen over a translucent gray body.
gemstone
Amazonite
The blue-green gem variety of microcline feldspar, often mottled with white, prized as an affordable ornamental stone.
mineral
Ceylon Garnet
Ceylon Garnet is a historic trade name for fine red almandine (and hessonite) garnet from the gem gravels of Sri Lanka.
gemstone
Ocean Jasper
A multicolored orbicular chalcedony from Madagascar famous for its circular eye-like orbs in greens, pinks, whites, and yellows.
sedimentary
Desert Rose
A rosette-shaped cluster of bladed gypsum or barite crystals that traps sand, forming flower-like formations in arid deserts.
mineral
Lake Michigan Agate
Glacially deposited banded agates found along Lake Michigan beaches, small waterworn pebbles with concentric red and grey banding.
gemstone
Staurolite Schist
A mica schist studded with brown staurolite porphyroblasts, sometimes forming the cross-shaped twins known as fairy stones.
metamorphic
Rutilated Quartz
Clear or smoky quartz threaded with golden to reddish needles of rutile, also poetically called Venus hair stone.
crystalQuartz Arenite
A clean, mature sandstone made almost entirely of quartz grains, representing extreme weathering, sorting, and recycling of sediment.
sedimentary
Garnierite
A vivid green hydrous nickel-magnesium silicate that is a major ore of nickel, mined from weathered ultramafic rocks.
mineral
Leopard Opal
A patterned common opal with mottled, leopard-like spots and blotches, prized as an ornamental and cabochon stone.
gemstoneFireworks Obsidian
Black volcanic glass dotted with radiating spherulite bursts that look like exploding fireworks frozen in the stone.
igneous
Flame Agate
A chalcedony agate with red, orange, and yellow plume or banding patterns that rise like dancing flames within the stone.
gemstone
Orbicular Granite
A rare granitic rock containing concentric, onion-like spheres called orbicules, prized as a striking ornamental stone.
igneousLemurian Seed Quartz
Clear quartz crystals marked by distinctive horizontal ladder-like striations, popularized from Brazil as a metaphysical stone.
crystal
Hydrogrossular Garnet
A water-bearing massive grossular garnet, usually green or pink, widely used as a tough jade-like carving stone.
gemstone
Tree Agate
A white chalcedony filled with green or black dendritic, tree-like mineral inclusions that resemble ferns or moss frozen in stone.
gemstone
Flower Agate
A creamy pink-and-white chalcedony from Madagascar containing flower-like plume inclusions that resemble blossoms suspended in stone.
gemstone
Pinfire Opal
A precious opal pattern made of tiny, densely packed pinpoint flashes of play-of-color, like sparkling speckles across the stone.
gemstone
Dumortierite Quartz
Quartz colored blue by inclusions of the mineral dumortierite, giving a denim-like blue ornamental stone harder than dumortierite alone.
gemstoneParticolored Tourmaline
A tourmaline displaying two or more distinct colors in a single crystal, prized for natural color zoning like watermelon and bicolor stones.
gemstone
Blue Pearl Granite
A Norwegian larvikite dimension stone prized for its shimmering blue iridescent feldspar crystals.
igneous
Purple Tourmaline
An uncommon purple to violet tourmaline colored by manganese, the deeper reddish-purple stones sometimes called siberite.
gemstoneScenic Agate
A translucent agate whose mineral inclusions resemble miniature landscapes of trees, hills, and horizons within the stone.
gemstone