Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia

Search and identify 1,000+ rocks, minerals, crystals, and gemstones — with properties, formation, colors, hardness, and how to tell them apart.

Verdite

A rich green, fuchsite-rich metamorphic rock from southern Africa, prized as a carving and ornamental stone.

An altered granite mottled pink and green from feldspar and epidote, popular as a tough, colorful ornamental rock.

A pegmatite rock of feldspar intergrown with wedge-shaped quartz that resembles ancient runic or Hebrew writing.

A dark green-and-black stromatolite jasper patterned with swirling orbs, formed from fossilized ancient microbial colonies.

A green-and-red ornamental stone of epidote and red piemontite or iron oxide, named for its dragon-skin coloring; not a true jasper.

A vivid yellow-and-black banded stone from Indonesian volcanic vents, colored by sulfur, arsenic minerals and iron oxides, not true jasper.

A schist derived from clay-rich sediments, rich in mica and often bearing index minerals like garnet, staurolite, or kyanite.

A fine-grained, sodium-rich contact-metasomatic rock formed where shale is albitized next to intruding diabase or spilite.

A fiery jasper whose red, orange, and yellow plumes lick across the stone like flames against an earthy background.

A banded agate that displays a moving shadow or flash across its surface when tilted under light, caused by closely spaced parallel bands.

A green ornamental stone, often serpentine-rich marble or verde antique, valued for its rich green color and white veining.

An opaque, iron-rich variety of microcrystalline quartz known for its deep brick-red color and ancient history as a stone of strength and grounding.