Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ rocks, minerals, crystals, and gemstones — with properties, formation, colors, hardness, and how to tell them apart.
Green Quartz
A green variety of macrocrystalline quartz, usually the heat- or radiation-altered prasiolite, prized for its soft mint hue.
crystal
Clear Quartz
The pure, colorless form of crystalline quartz, valued for its clarity, abundance, and piezoelectric properties used in electronics.
crystal
Tangerine Quartz
Clear quartz coated with orange-red hematite, giving points a vivid tangerine color, mainly from Brazil.
crystal
Star Rose Quartz
Rose quartz that displays a six-rayed star (asterism) when cut as a cabochon, caused by microscopic rutile-like inclusions.
gemstoneCandle Quartz
A quartz with a main point surrounded by many smaller crystals along its sides, resembling melted candle wax, mainly from Madagascar.
crystal
Strawberry Quartz
A pink-to-red quartz colored by iron oxide inclusions that create a speckled, strawberry-like appearance within clear crystal.
crystal
Girasol Quartz
A translucent milky quartz that shows a soft, floating blue-white glow when light passes through it.
crystal
Tibetan Quartz
Clear quartz mined in the Himalayan region, often double-terminated and containing dark hematite or carbon inclusions.
crystal
Elestial Quartz
A quartz with a complex skeletal, layered surface of many terminations and etched recesses, also called skeletal or jacare quartz.
crystal
Golden Healer Quartz
Quartz colored or coated by golden iron oxides such as limonite or goethite, giving a warm sunlit yellow glow.
crystal
Rutilated Quartz
Clear or smoky quartz threaded with golden to reddish needles of rutile, also poetically called Venus hair stone.
crystal
Dumortierite Quartz
Quartz colored blue by inclusions of the mineral dumortierite, giving a denim-like blue ornamental stone harder than dumortierite alone.
gemstone
Cathedral Quartz
Quartz with a stepped, multi-pointed structure of parallel side crystals resembling the spires of a cathedral.
crystal
Quartzite Sandstone
A tough, quartz-rich sandstone cemented by silica, transitional toward true quartzite but still sedimentary in origin.
sedimentaryLemurian Seed Quartz
Clear quartz crystals marked by distinctive horizontal ladder-like striations, popularized from Brazil as a metaphysical stone.
crystal
Green Jasper
An opaque green variety of chalcedony quartz colored by iron and chlorite-group inclusions, prized as a durable carving and cabochon stone.
mineral
Quartz-mica Schist
A foliated metamorphic rock of interlayered quartz and mica, producing a sparkling, easily split rock from metamorphosed sandy shales.
metamorphic
Tourmalinated Quartz
Clear or milky quartz threaded with black needles of tourmaline (schorl), combining quartz clarity with dramatic dark inclusions.
crystalExotica Jasper
Also called Sci-Fi Jasper, a Mexican jasper-rhyolite with swirling abstract patterns in cream, tan, gray, pink, and green.
gemstone
Picture Jasper
An opaque brown chalcedony whose iron-stained banding mimics deserts, dunes, and distant mountain skylines.
mineral
Aventurine
A translucent quartz speckled with glittery mineral inclusions that produce a shimmering aventurescence, most often green.
crystalSuper Seven
A trade name for quartz containing a combination of seven minerals including amethyst, smoky quartz, and cacoxenite, prized by collectors.
crystal
Pietersite
A brecciated, chatoyant quartz with swirling blue, gold, and brown fibers that shimmer like a stormy sky.
gemstone
Tiger's Eye
A golden-brown chatoyant quartz with a shimmering silky band of light, formed when quartz replaces fibrous crocidolite.
gemstone