Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ rocks, minerals, crystals, and gemstones — with properties, formation, colors, hardness, and how to tell them apart.
Larvikite
A Norwegian intrusive rock whose feldspar crystals flash silvery-blue, widely used as blue pearl granite countertops.
igneous
Moonstone
A feldspar gem famous for adularescence, a floating blue-white glow that shimmers across the stone like moonlight.
gemstone
Amazonite
The blue-green gem variety of microcline feldspar, often mottled with white, prized as an affordable ornamental stone.
mineralRainbow Moonstone
A near-colorless feldspar showing blue and multicolored sheen; gemologically a white labradorite rather than true orthoclase moonstone.
gemstone
Lake Michigan Agate
Glacially deposited banded agates found along Lake Michigan beaches, small waterworn pebbles with concentric red and grey banding.
gemstone
Sodalite
A royal-blue feldspathoid mineral with white calcite veining, often confused with lapis lazuli but lacking its golden pyrite flecks.
mineral
White Moonstone
The classic moonstone: a milky-white feldspar showing the prized floating blue-to-silver adularescent glow that gives the gem its name.
gemstoneGrey Moonstone
A smoky gray feldspar moonstone, often called new moon stone, showing a silvery-blue adularescent sheen over a translucent gray body.
gemstoneUnakite Jasper
An altered granite of pink feldspar, green epidote and quartz, mottled pink-and-green and popular as a tumbled and carving stone.
metamorphic
Aventurine
A translucent quartz speckled with glittery mineral inclusions that produce a shimmering aventurescence, most often green.
crystal
Anatase
A tetragonal titanium dioxide polymorph forming steep bipyramidal crystals, often deep blue to black with brilliant adamantine luster.
mineral
Leopard Skin Jasper
A spotted jasper-rhyolite patterned with leopard-like rings and ovals, valued as an earthy ornamental and lapidary stone.
sedimentary
Turquoise
A prized blue to blue-green copper-aluminium phosphate, often veined with dark matrix, treasured for jewelry across many cultures.
mineral
Chrysocolla
A vivid blue-green hydrated copper silicate, soft on its own but prized as a gem when hardened by intergrown quartz or chalcedony.
mineral
Hemimorphite
A hydrous zinc silicate, often sky-blue, that is an ore of zinc and a collectible mineral forming botryoidal crusts and crystals.
mineral
Iolite
The gem variety of cordierite, famous for strong pleochroism that shifts from violet-blue to near-colorless.
gemstone
Bumblebee Jasper
A vivid yellow-and-black banded stone from Indonesian volcanic vents, colored by sulfur, arsenic minerals and iron oxides, not true jasper.
sedimentary
Jade
A tough, prized ornamental gem that is actually two distinct minerals, jadeite and nephrite, revered for millennia in many cultures.
gemstone
Garden Quartz
Clear quartz filled with mineral inclusions that look like underwater gardens, mossy landscapes, or floating scenery.
crystalFancy Jasper
A soft-toned, multicolored jasper with swirling green, mauve, and cream patterns, popular and affordable in the bead trade.
sedimentary
Aquamarine Matrix
Aquamarine crystals still attached to their natural host rock, prized as mineral specimens showing beryl in its original pocket setting.
mineral
Anhydrite
A water-free calcium sulfate mineral closely related to gypsum, forming in evaporite deposits and swelling into gypsum when it absorbs water.
mineral
Orange Calcite
A soft, glowing orange variety of calcite colored by iron oxides, popular as tumbled stones and known for fizzing in acid.
mineral
Blue Tourmaline
Tourmaline in blue tones, encompassing iron-colored indicolite and the rare neon copper-bearing Paraiba, among the scarcer tourmaline colors.
gemstone