Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ rocks, minerals, crystals, and gemstones — with properties, formation, colors, hardness, and how to tell them apart.
Garden Quartz
Clear quartz filled with mineral inclusions that look like underwater gardens, mossy landscapes, or floating scenery.
crystal
Star Rose Quartz
Rose quartz that displays a six-rayed star (asterism) when cut as a cabochon, caused by microscopic rutile-like inclusions.
gemstone
Tibetan Quartz
Clear quartz mined in the Himalayan region, often double-terminated and containing dark hematite or carbon inclusions.
crystal
Phantom Quartz
Quartz containing visible internal crystal outlines, formed when growth paused and trapped a layer of mineral inclusions.
crystal
Girasol Quartz
A translucent milky quartz that shows a soft, floating blue-white glow when light passes through it.
crystal
Tangerine Quartz
Clear quartz coated with orange-red hematite, giving points a vivid tangerine color, mainly from Brazil.
crystal
Elestial Quartz
A quartz with a complex skeletal, layered surface of many terminations and etched recesses, also called skeletal or jacare quartz.
crystal
Strawberry Quartz
A pink-to-red quartz colored by iron oxide inclusions that create a speckled, strawberry-like appearance within clear crystal.
crystal
Rutilated Quartz
Clear or smoky quartz threaded with golden to reddish needles of rutile, also poetically called Venus hair stone.
crystal
Cathedral Quartz
Quartz with a stepped, multi-pointed structure of parallel side crystals resembling the spires of a cathedral.
crystal
Quartz-mica Schist
A foliated metamorphic rock of interlayered quartz and mica, producing a sparkling, easily split rock from metamorphosed sandy shales.
metamorphic
Lemurian Seed Quartz
Clear quartz crystals marked by distinctive horizontal ladder-like striations, popularized from Brazil as a metaphysical stone.
crystal
Quartzite Sandstone
A tough, quartz-rich sandstone cemented by silica, transitional toward true quartzite but still sedimentary in origin.
sedimentary
Golden Healer Quartz
Quartz colored or coated by golden iron oxides such as limonite or goethite, giving a warm sunlit yellow glow.
crystal
Dumortierite Quartz
Quartz colored blue by inclusions of the mineral dumortierite, giving a denim-like blue ornamental stone harder than dumortierite alone.
gemstone
Tourmalinated Quartz
Clear or milky quartz threaded with black needles of tourmaline (schorl), combining quartz clarity with dramatic dark inclusions.
crystal
Sunset Opal
An opal with warm sunset hues of orange, amber, and red, prized for its glowing fiery body color reminiscent of dusk skies.
gemstone
Andesine
An intermediate plagioclase feldspar between albite and anorthite, marketed as a red to champagne gemstone, sometimes color-treated.
gemstone
Andalusite
A pleochroic aluminum silicate that flashes green and reddish-brown from different angles, with a cross-marked variety called chiastolite.
mineral
Andesite
A fine-grained, intermediate volcanic rock common at subduction-zone volcanoes, between basalt and rhyolite in composition.
igneous
Andamooka Opal
Precious opal from the Andamooka field of South Australia, famous for solid crystal opal and its distinctive treatable matrix opal.
gemstone
Andradite Garnet
The calcium-iron garnet species, ranging from brilliant green demantoid to golden topazolite and jet-black melanite.
gemstone
Andesine-Labradorite
An intermediate plagioclase feldspar spanning andesine and labradorite, marketed as a red-to-green gem, much of which is copper-diffusion treated.
gemstone
Yellow Beryl
The yellow variety of beryl, also called heliodor or golden beryl, colored by iron and valued for its bright color and durability.
gemstone