Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ rocks, minerals, crystals, and gemstones — with properties, formation, colors, hardness, and how to tell them apart.
Lime Green Tourmaline
A bright, fresh lime to yellowish-green elbaite tourmaline (verdelite), colored by iron and trace manganese for a lively spring-green tone.
gemstone
Green Tourmaline
The green variety of tourmaline, also called verdelite, ranging from bright grass green to deep forest tones colored by iron.
gemstonePink Obsidian
A pink to rose volcanic glass; some is natural iron-tinted obsidian while much sold commercially is color-treated glass.
igneous
Katoite
The water-rich end-member of the hydrogrossular series, a soft hydrogarnet found in altered rocks and known from cement chemistry.
mineral
Tourmaline Schist
A foliated schist threaded with black tourmaline (schorl) needles, marking boron-rich metamorphic or metasomatic conditions.
metamorphic
Oligoclase
A sodium-rich plagioclase feldspar between albite and andesine, parent of aventurescent sunstone and the bluish gem peristerite.
mineral
Yellow Obsidian
Yellow to golden volcanic glass; natural examples owe their color to iron, though much bright yellow obsidian on the market is manufactured glass.
igneous
Verdelite
The classic green gem variety of elbaite tourmaline, ranging from bright grass-green to deep forest tones colored by iron or chromium.
gemstoneLake Huron Agate
Glacially transported banded agates found along Lake Huron's shores, typically small, frosted pebbles with red-orange iron banding.
gemstone
Brown Tourmaline
Warm brown tourmaline, usually magnesium-rich dravite, with tones from pale champagne to deep coffee-brown.
gemstone
Hyalophane
A barium-bearing potassium feldspar intermediate between orthoclase and celsian, found in barium-rich metamorphic and ore deposits.
mineral
Thulite
A pink, manganese-rich variety of zoisite used as an ornamental gemstone, often mottled with white quartz and grey matrix.
gemstone
Pyrope Garnet
The magnesium-rich garnet famed for its intense blood-red 'fire,' historically the Bohemian garnet of Victorian jewelry.
gemstone
Dravite
The magnesium-rich brown member of the tourmaline group, named for Austria's Drava River and prized for warm earthy tones.
mineral
Blue Sapphire
The blue gem variety of corundum, prized for its rich color, extreme hardness, and brilliance second only to diamond.
gemstone
Slawsonite
A rare strontium-dominant feldspar, the strontium analogue of paracelsian, found in metamorphosed strontium-rich and manganese-bearing rocks.
mineral
Goldmanite
A green, vanadium-dominant garnet that forms in vanadium-rich metamorphic and sedimentary rocks, notably in uranium-vanadium districts.
mineral
Chrome-Dravite
A chromium-dominant tourmaline related to dravite, producing intensely deep green to blackish-green crystals from chromium-rich metamorphic rocks.
mineral
Gahnite
A hard zinc-rich member of the spinel group, usually dark blue-green to black, forming octahedral crystals in metamorphic and pegmatitic rocks.
mineralDallasite Jasper
A green-and-white volcanic breccia from Vancouver Island, cemented by jasper and rich in epidote, popular as a regional lapidary stone.
gemstone
Tourmaline
A boron-rich silicate gemstone group famous for occurring in every color of the rainbow, sometimes several within a single crystal.
gemstoneWehrite
An ultramafic rock of olivine and clinopyroxene, a peridotite variety common as cumulate layers in mafic intrusions.
igneous
Quartzite Sandstone
A tough, quartz-rich sandstone cemented by silica, transitional toward true quartzite but still sedimentary in origin.
sedimentary
Gem Silica
A rare, intensely blue chalcedony colored by copper-rich chrysocolla, prized as the most valuable of the blue chalcedonies.
gemstone