Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ rocks, minerals, crystals, and gemstones — with properties, formation, colors, hardness, and how to tell them apart.
Rutilated Quartz
Clear or smoky quartz threaded with golden to reddish needles of rutile, also poetically called Venus hair stone.
crystal
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.
crystal
Garden Quartz
Clear quartz filled with mineral inclusions that look like underwater gardens, mossy landscapes, or floating scenery.
crystal
Elestial Quartz
A quartz with a complex skeletal, layered surface of many terminations and etched recesses, also called skeletal or jacare quartz.
crystal
Cathedral Quartz
Quartz with a stepped, multi-pointed structure of parallel side crystals resembling the spires of a cathedral.
crystal
Phantom Quartz
Quartz containing visible internal crystal outlines, formed when growth paused and trapped a layer of mineral inclusions.
crystal
Clear Quartz
The pure, colorless form of crystalline quartz, valued for its clarity, abundance, and piezoelectric properties used in electronics.
crystal
Blue Quartz
A naturally blue quartz colored by tiny mineral inclusions such as dumortierite or scattered rutile and tourmaline fibers.
crystal
Golden Healer Quartz
Quartz colored or coated by golden iron oxides such as limonite or goethite, giving a warm sunlit yellow glow.
crystalLemurian Seed Quartz
Clear quartz crystals marked by distinctive horizontal ladder-like striations, popularized from Brazil as a metaphysical stone.
crystal
Quartz-mica Schist
A foliated metamorphic rock of interlayered quartz and mica, producing a sparkling, easily split rock from metamorphosed sandy shales.
metamorphicMilk Opal
An opaque to translucent milky-white common opal valued for its soft porcelain-like color rather than play-of-color.
gemstone
Rhodochrosite
Rhodochrosite is a rose-pink manganese carbonate prized for raspberry-red crystals and banded pink-and-white gem material.
gemstone
Morganite
The pink-to-peach variety of beryl colored by manganese, popular for romantic engagement jewelry.
gemstone
Pink Emerald
A trade name sometimes used for pink beryl (morganite), the manganese-colored rose-to-peach variety of the emerald mineral.
gemstone
Thulite
A pink, manganese-rich variety of zoisite used as an ornamental gemstone, often mottled with white quartz and grey matrix.
gemstonePink Obsidian
A pink to rose volcanic glass; some is natural iron-tinted obsidian while much sold commercially is color-treated glass.
igneous
Syenite
A coarse-grained intrusive igneous rock dominated by alkali feldspar with little or no quartz.
igneous
Rosolite Garnet
A rose-pink variety of grossular garnet from Mexico, also known as landerite or xalostocite, prized for its soft pink color.
gemstone
Selenite
A clear, soft crystalline variety of gypsum that forms glassy or fibrous wands, so soft it can be scratched with a fingernail.
crystalCloudy Obsidian
Obsidian with a hazy, cloud-like translucency caused by uneven distribution of tiny bubbles or incipient crystallites in the glass.
igneous
White Tourmaline
A colorless to milky-white elbaite tourmaline known as achroite, the rare nearly pigment-free member of the tourmaline group.
gemstonePrase
An old name for a dull leek-green variety of quartz or chalcedony colored by green mineral inclusions, historically called mother of emerald.
crystal