Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ rocks, minerals, crystals, and gemstones — with properties, formation, colors, hardness, and how to tell them apart.
Pinfire Opal
A precious opal pattern made of tiny, densely packed pinpoint flashes of play-of-color, like sparkling speckles across the stone.
gemstone
Milk Opal
An opaque to translucent milky-white common opal valued for its soft porcelain-like color rather than play-of-color.
gemstone
Midnight Lace Obsidian
A black volcanic glass threaded with delicate grey, swirling lace-like bands of flow lines that show beautifully when polished.
igneous
Herkimer Diamond
Exceptionally clear, naturally double-terminated quartz crystals from Herkimer County, New York, prized for their diamond-like brilliance.
crystal
Fire Agate
A rare brown chalcedony containing thin iron-oxide layers that produce flashing, fiery rainbow iridescence like trapped flames.
gemstone
Cleavelandite
A striking platy, blade-like variety of albite feldspar that grows in fanned aggregates of thin white crystals within granite pegmatites.
mineral
Cacholong Opal
An opaque, porcelain-white common opal prized for its milky, pearl-like appearance and high porosity, often carved or beaded.
gemstone
Belomorite
A regional Russian name for a moonstone-like plagioclase from the White Sea coast, prized for its bluish, slightly iridescent schiller.
gemstone
Woodbine Jasper
An earthy-toned jasper with vine-like or scenic patterning, valued by lapidaries for warm browns, reds, and creams that polish to a smooth finish.
gemstone
Thunderegg Agate
A nodular rhyolite geode-like ball whose plain exterior hides a star-shaped agate or chalcedony core when cut.
gemstone
Sylvanite
A silver-white gold-silver telluride and important gold-silver ore, noted for crystals arranged in writing-like graphic patterns.
mineral
Sesame Jasper
A finely speckled pale jasper trade stone named for its sesame-seed-like flecks, closely related to Kiwi Jasper.
mineral
Reptile Jasper
A green-and-black mottled jasper whose scale-like patterning resembles reptile skin, often linked to Kambaba and crocodile jaspers.
mineral
Peacock Ore
A copper-iron sulfide ore famous for its iridescent peacock-like purple and blue tarnish; often sold as treated chalcopyrite.
mineral
Particolored Tourmaline
A tourmaline displaying two or more distinct colors in a single crystal, prized for natural color zoning like watermelon and bicolor stones.
gemstone
Dumortierite Quartz
Quartz colored blue by inclusions of the mineral dumortierite, giving a denim-like blue ornamental stone harder than dumortierite alone.
gemstone
Cat's Eye Aquamarine
Aquamarine that shows a bright moving band of light, or cat's eye, caused by parallel needle-like inclusions when cut as a cabochon.
gemstone
Rubellite
The red to raspberry-pink variety of tourmaline, prized for its vivid ruby-like color that holds under both daylight and artificial light.
gemstone
Larimar
A rare sky-blue variety of pectolite found only in the Dominican Republic, prized for its sea-like color and white volcanic patterning.
gemstone
Cat's Eye Opal
An opal cut to show chatoyancy, a sharp moving band of light like a cat's eye, usually in honey, green or yellow common opal.
gemstone
Cactus Quartz
A South African quartz whose central crystal is coated in a cactus-like crust of tiny secondary points, also called spirit quartz.
crystal
Pele's Hair
Fine, golden, hair-like strands of basaltic volcanic glass spun from fluid lava droplets during eruptions, named for the Hawaiian volcano goddess.
igneous