Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia

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

Nephrite

One of the two jade minerals, an amphibole prized for its extreme toughness and soft, waxy green hues used in carving for millennia.

The rarer and more valuable of the two jade minerals, prized for its translucent emerald-green 'imperial' color and extreme toughness.

The calcium-aluminum garnet species spanning green tsavorite, cinnamon hessonite, and colorless leuco garnet — one of the most varied garnets.

A calcium titanium silicate, gem-known as sphene, famous for fiery dispersion that exceeds diamond and rich green-to-yellow colors.

The calcium-iron garnet species, ranging from brilliant green demantoid to golden topazolite and jet-black melanite.

A green, vanadium-dominant garnet that forms in vanadium-rich metamorphic and sedimentary rocks, notably in uranium-vanadium districts.

The rare calcium-chromium garnet, famous for its sparkling emerald-green druzy crusts of tiny crystals, the only consistently green garnet.

A soft, earthy sedimentary rock made of a mixture of calcium carbonate and clay, intermediate between limestone and mudstone.

A medium-grade metamorphic rock rich in aligned platy minerals that gives it a shiny, easily splitting, foliated texture.

Basalt that has been metamorphosed, developing new minerals like chlorite, actinolite, and epidote that give it a greenish color.

A tough, prized ornamental gem that is actually two distinct minerals, jadeite and nephrite, revered for millennia in many cultures.

A calcium-magnesium tourmaline that forms in metamorphosed limestones, typically dark green to brown and often in well-formed crystals.