Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ rocks, minerals, crystals, and gemstones — with properties, formation, colors, hardness, and how to tell them apart.
Silver Leaf Jasper
A gray-toned jasper with swirling cream, black, and brown leaf-like patterns, sometimes with druzy or agate pockets.
mineralGirasol Quartz
A translucent milky quartz that shows a soft, floating blue-white glow when light passes through it.
crystalPhantom Quartz
Quartz containing visible internal crystal outlines, formed when growth paused and trapped a layer of mineral inclusions.
crystalStrawberry Quartz
A pink-to-red quartz colored by iron oxide inclusions that create a speckled, strawberry-like appearance within clear crystal.
crystalQuartzite Sandstone
A tough, quartz-rich sandstone cemented by silica, transitional toward true quartzite but still sedimentary in origin.
sedimentaryElestial Quartz
A quartz with a complex skeletal, layered surface of many terminations and etched recesses, also called skeletal or jacare quartz.
crystalRutilated Quartz
Clear or smoky quartz threaded with golden to reddish needles of rutile, also poetically called Venus hair stone.
crystalGolden Healer Quartz
Quartz colored or coated by golden iron oxides such as limonite or goethite, giving a warm sunlit yellow glow.
crystalDumortierite Quartz
Quartz colored blue by inclusions of the mineral dumortierite, giving a denim-like blue ornamental stone harder than dumortierite alone.
gemstoneCathedral Quartz
Quartz with a stepped, multi-pointed structure of parallel side crystals resembling the spires of a cathedral.
crystalLemurian Seed Quartz
Clear quartz crystals marked by distinctive horizontal ladder-like striations, popularized from Brazil as a metaphysical stone.
crystalQuartz-mica Schist
A foliated metamorphic rock of interlayered quartz and mica, producing a sparkling, easily split rock from metamorphosed sandy shales.
metamorphicFrost Agate
A pale chalcedony agate with cloudy, frost-like white patterning suggesting frost on a window or icy crystalline textures.
gemstoneTourmalinated Quartz
Clear or milky quartz threaded with black needles of tourmaline (schorl), combining quartz clarity with dramatic dark inclusions.
crystalOregon Opal
Opal from Oregon, USA, ranging from translucent blue Owyhee opal to clear and fiery contra-luz precious opal from Opal Butte.
gemstoneOrendite
A rare ultrapotassic lamproite carrying sanidine, phlogopite and diopside, classically from Wyoming's Leucite Hills.
igneousOrthoclase
A common rock-forming potassium feldspar, the Mohs hardness reference at 6, found in granites and used in ceramics and glassmaking.
mineralOrca Agate
A bold black-and-white banded chalcedony named for its orca-like coloring, popular as carvings and statement jewelry.
gemstoneOrange Opal
A vivid orange opal, classically Mexican fire opal, prized for its bright, fiery body color that glows when backlit.
gemstonePeacock Ore
A copper-iron sulfide ore famous for its iridescent peacock-like purple and blue tarnish; often sold as treated chalcopyrite.
mineralOrange Garnet
A trade term for orange garnets, mainly manganese-rich spessartine and the brownish hessonite variety of grossular.
gemstoneOrange Obsidian
Obsidian colored orange by iron oxide inclusions; vivid uniform orange material is frequently manufactured glass rather than volcanic.
igneousOrange Calcite
A soft, glowing orange variety of calcite colored by iron oxides, popular as tumbled stones and known for fizzing in acid.
mineralOregon Sunstone
A copper-bearing labradorite feldspar from Oregon, famous for its range of natural colors and glittery aventurescent copper schiller.
gemstone