Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ rocks, minerals, crystals, and gemstones — with properties, formation, colors, hardness, and how to tell them apart.
Tibetan Quartz
Clear quartz mined in the Himalayan region, often double-terminated and containing dark hematite or carbon inclusions.
crystalCandle Quartz
A quartz with a main point surrounded by many smaller crystals along its sides, resembling melted candle wax, mainly from Madagascar.
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Faden Quartz
Tabular quartz crossed by a milky white thread-like line marking where the crystal repeatedly cracked and re-healed.
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Phantom Quartz
Quartz containing visible internal crystal outlines, formed when growth paused and trapped a layer of mineral inclusions.
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Clear Quartz
The pure, colorless form of crystalline quartz, valued for its clarity, abundance, and piezoelectric properties used in electronics.
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Garden Quartz
Clear quartz filled with mineral inclusions that look like underwater gardens, mossy landscapes, or floating scenery.
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Green Quartz
A green variety of macrocrystalline quartz, usually the heat- or radiation-altered prasiolite, prized for its soft mint hue.
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Elestial Quartz
A quartz with a complex skeletal, layered surface of many terminations and etched recesses, also called skeletal or jacare quartz.
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Cathedral Quartz
Quartz with a stepped, multi-pointed structure of parallel side crystals resembling the spires of a cathedral.
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Golden Healer Quartz
Quartz colored or coated by golden iron oxides such as limonite or goethite, giving a warm sunlit yellow glow.
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Star Rose Quartz
Rose quartz that displays a six-rayed star (asterism) when cut as a cabochon, caused by microscopic rutile-like inclusions.
gemstoneLemurian Seed Quartz
Clear quartz crystals marked by distinctive horizontal ladder-like striations, popularized from Brazil as a metaphysical stone.
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Quartz-mica Schist
A foliated metamorphic rock of interlayered quartz and mica, producing a sparkling, easily split rock from metamorphosed sandy shales.
metamorphicApricot Agate
A soft peachy-orange variety of banded chalcedony, naturally iron-tinted or dyed, popular for warm-toned beads and jewelry.
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Aquamarine Matrix
Aquamarine crystals still attached to their natural host rock, prized as mineral specimens showing beryl in its original pocket setting.
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Emerald in Matrix
Natural emerald crystals still embedded in their host rock, prized as mineral specimens that show how the gem grew in place.
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Morganite
The pink-to-peach variety of beryl colored by manganese, popular for romantic engagement jewelry.
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Pink Beryl
The pink to peach variety of beryl, better known as morganite, colored by manganese and prized for its gentle pastel hues.
gemstoneApricot Tourmaline
A warm apricot to peachy orange-pink elbaite tourmaline colored mainly by manganese, prized for its soft, glowing warmth.
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Morganite Crystal
The natural crystal form of morganite, the manganese-colored pink-to-peach variety of beryl popular in romantic jewelry.
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Orange Calcite
A soft, glowing orange variety of calcite colored by iron oxides, popular as tumbled stones and known for fizzing in acid.
mineralLotus Garnet
A delicate pinkish-purple to peach garnet from Tanzania, a pyrope-spessartine blend named for the soft colors of a lotus flower.
gemstonePrase
An old name for a dull leek-green variety of quartz or chalcedony colored by green mineral inclusions, historically called mother of emerald.
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Amethyst
The purple variety of quartz, colored by iron and natural irradiation, prized as the classic violet birthstone of February.
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