Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ rocks, minerals, crystals, and gemstones — with properties, formation, colors, hardness, and how to tell them apart.
Bixbite
An old trade name for red beryl, the extremely rare manganese-colored beryl from Utah, now largely replaced by the term red beryl.
gemstone
Green Tourmaline
The green variety of tourmaline, also called verdelite, ranging from bright grass green to deep forest tones colored by iron.
gemstone
Halite
The natural mineral form of table salt, a soft, water-soluble evaporite that forms perfect cubic crystals and tastes salty.
mineral
Green Beryl
Light green beryl colored mainly by iron, distinguished from emerald, which owes its deeper green to chromium or vanadium.
gemstone
Rose Quartz
The soft pink, usually cloudy variety of quartz colored by trace titanium or microscopic inclusions, popular for carvings and beads.
crystal
Larvikite
A Norwegian intrusive rock whose feldspar crystals flash silvery-blue, widely used as blue pearl granite countertops.
igneous
Tourmalinated Quartz
Clear or milky quartz threaded with black needles of tourmaline (schorl), combining quartz clarity with dramatic dark inclusions.
crystal
Phantom Quartz
Quartz containing visible internal crystal outlines, formed when growth paused and trapped a layer of mineral inclusions.
crystal
Jelly Opal
A translucent, gelatinous-looking opal whose transparency gives floating, glowing play-of-color a watery, jelly-like appearance.
gemstone
Rutilated Quartz
Clear or smoky quartz threaded with golden to reddish needles of rutile, also poetically called Venus hair stone.
crystal
Smoky Quartz
The smoky brown to gray variety of quartz, colored by natural irradiation, valued as both a gemstone and crystal specimen.
crystal
Scepter Quartz
Quartz with a wider crystal 'cap' that grew over a narrower stem, forming a natural scepter or mushroom shape.
crystal
Spirit Quartz
A South African quartz whose central crystal is coated in tiny druzy points, also called cactus or fairy quartz.
crystalLemurian Seed Quartz
Clear quartz crystals marked by distinctive horizontal ladder-like striations, popularized from Brazil as a metaphysical stone.
crystal
Enhydro Quartz
Quartz containing a sealed pocket of ancient water, often with a mobile air bubble that moves when the crystal is tilted.
crystal
Peridot
The gem-quality green variety of olivine, peridot is colored by iron and is one of the few gems found in only one color.
gemstone
Uvarovite Garnet
The rare calcium-chromium garnet, famous for its sparkling emerald-green druzy crusts of tiny crystals, the only consistently green garnet.
mineral
Demantoid Garnet
A rare green andradite garnet famed for fire exceeding diamond and distinctive horsetail inclusions in Russian stones.
gemstone
Tactite
A contact-metasomatic calc-silicate rock, essentially a skarn, formed where intrusions react with carbonate rocks and often host ore.
metamorphic
Green Obsidian
Green-tinted volcanic glass; some is naturally colored by trace iron, but vivid emerald-green pieces are usually manufactured glass.
crystal
Verdelite
The classic green gem variety of elbaite tourmaline, ranging from bright grass-green to deep forest tones colored by iron or chromium.
gemstone
Chrome Diopside
A vivid green chromium-bearing diopside, an affordable emerald-like gem mined largely in Siberia.
gemstone
Matrix Opal
Opal in which precious play-of-color is intimately dispersed through the pores of its host rock rather than forming a solid seam.
gemstone
Trapiche Beryl
Beryl displaying a fixed six-spoke wheel pattern from impurity inclusions, most famous in Colombian trapiche emerald.
gemstone