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
Green Quartz
A green variety of macrocrystalline quartz, usually the heat- or radiation-altered prasiolite, prized for its soft mint hue.
crystal
Elestial Quartz
A quartz with a complex skeletal, layered surface of many terminations and etched recesses, also called skeletal or jacare quartz.
crystal
Cathedral Quartz
Quartz with a stepped, multi-pointed structure of parallel side crystals resembling the spires of a cathedral.
crystal
Phantom Quartz
Quartz containing visible internal crystal outlines, formed when growth paused and trapped a layer of mineral inclusions.
crystal
Clear Quartz
The pure, colorless form of crystalline quartz, valued for its clarity, abundance, and piezoelectric properties used in electronics.
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
Golden Healer Quartz
Quartz colored or coated by golden iron oxides such as limonite or goethite, giving a warm sunlit yellow glow.
crystalLemurian Seed Quartz
Clear quartz crystals marked by distinctive horizontal ladder-like striations, popularized from Brazil as a metaphysical stone.
crystal
Quartz-mica Schist
A foliated metamorphic rock of interlayered quartz and mica, producing a sparkling, easily split rock from metamorphosed sandy shales.
metamorphic
Blue Jasper
An opaque blue variety of chalcedony jasper, less common than red or green forms, colored by mineral inclusions.
mineral
Blue Beryl
The blue color variety of beryl, ranging from pale sky tones to rich sea-blue, best known in its finest grades as aquamarine.
gemstone
Blue Goldstone
A man-made glittering glass colored deep blue with cobalt and studded with tiny copper crystals that mimic a starry night sky.
gemstone
Blue Calcite
A soft, soothing powder-blue variety of calcite, a common calcium carbonate mineral often sold as gentle tumbled stones.
mineral
Blue Apatite
A blue calcium phosphate mineral with vivid color and middling hardness, the same mineral family that forms bones and teeth.
mineral
Blue Opal
A soft blue common opal, famously from Peru, valued for its serene sky-to-teal color rather than play-of-color.
gemstone
Blue Tourmaline
Tourmaline in blue tones, encompassing iron-colored indicolite and the rare neon copper-bearing Paraiba, among the scarcer tourmaline colors.
gemstone
Blue Chalcedony
A translucent, soft blue variety of microcrystalline quartz whose color comes from light scattering through its fine structure.
mineralBlue Obsidian
Blue-colored volcanic glass; genuine natural blue obsidian is very rare, while much blue obsidian on the market is manufactured glass.
crystal
Blue Topaz
A durable blue silicate gem, mostly produced by treating colorless topaz, popular for its bright color and affordability.
gemstone
Blue Sapphire
The blue gem variety of corundum, prized for its rich color, extreme hardness, and brilliance second only to diamond.
gemstone
Blue Kyanite
A striking blue aluminum silicate famous for bladed crystals and anisotropic hardness that differs dramatically along and across the blade.
mineral
Neon Blue Tourmaline
An intensely glowing copper-bearing tourmaline whose electric neon-blue color makes it one of the most valuable gems in the world.
gemstoneElectric Blue Obsidian
Obsidian with a vivid blue sheen or hue; natural blue obsidian is rare, and intensely uniform blue material is usually manufactured glass.
igneous