Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia

Search and identify 1,000+ rocks, minerals, crystals, and gemstones — with properties, formation, colors, hardness, and how to tell them apart.

Rutilated Quartz

Clear or smoky quartz threaded with golden to reddish needles of rutile, also poetically called Venus hair stone.

The fine white marble of Mount Pentelikon used to build the Parthenon, famous for the golden patina it develops with age.

A hard, brilliant fluorosilicate gemstone occurring in many colors, from precious golden imperial topaz to popular blue topaz.

Grandite is an intermediate garnet between grossular and andradite, common in skarns and prized for vivid green to golden crystals.

The calcium-iron garnet species, ranging from brilliant green demantoid to golden topazolite and jet-black melanite.

A golden-brown chatoyant quartz with a shimmering silky band of light, formed when quartz replaces fibrous crocidolite.

A banded combination rock of golden tiger's eye, red jasper, and metallic hematite, formed in ancient iron deposits.

Rutile is a major titanium ore and the famous golden needle inclusion that gives rutilated quartz its shimmering threads.

Fine, golden, hair-like strands of basaltic volcanic glass spun from fluid lava droplets during eruptions, named for the Hawaiian volcano goddess.

An intensely blue metamorphic rock of lazurite flecked with golden pyrite, prized for millennia as a gemstone and ultramarine pigment.

An old varietal name for alkali- and cesium-rich beryl, typically colorless to pale pink, overlapping with vorobyevite and morganite.

The calcium-aluminum garnet species spanning green tsavorite, cinnamon hessonite, and colorless leuco garnet — one of the most varied garnets.