Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ rocks, minerals, crystals, and gemstones — with properties, formation, colors, hardness, and how to tell them apart.
Enhydro Quartz
Quartz containing a sealed pocket of ancient water, often with a mobile air bubble that moves when the crystal is tilted.
crystal
Lithium Quartz
A quartz crystal containing pink to lilac lithium-bearing mineral inclusions that give a soft cloudy lavender or rose coloration.
crystal
Scepter Quartz
Quartz with a wider crystal 'cap' that grew over a narrower stem, forming a natural scepter or mushroom shape.
crystal
Garden Quartz
Clear quartz filled with mineral inclusions that look like underwater gardens, mossy landscapes, or floating scenery.
crystal
Candle Quartz
A quartz with a main point surrounded by many smaller crystals along its sides, resembling melted candle wax, mainly from Madagascar.
crystal
Tangerine Quartz
Clear quartz coated with orange-red hematite, giving points a vivid tangerine color, mainly from Brazil.
crystal
Strawberry Quartz
A pink-to-red quartz colored by iron oxide inclusions that create a speckled, strawberry-like appearance within clear crystal.
crystal
Elestial Quartz
A quartz with a complex skeletal, layered surface of many terminations and etched recesses, also called skeletal or jacare quartz.
crystal
Rutilated Quartz
Clear or smoky quartz threaded with golden to reddish needles of rutile, also poetically called Venus hair stone.
crystal
Cathedral Quartz
Quartz with a stepped, multi-pointed structure of parallel side crystals resembling the spires of a cathedral.
crystal
Golden Healer Quartz
Quartz colored or coated by golden iron oxides such as limonite or goethite, giving a warm sunlit yellow glow.
crystal
Dumortierite Quartz
Quartz colored blue by inclusions of the mineral dumortierite, giving a denim-like blue ornamental stone harder than dumortierite alone.
gemstone
Tourmalinated Quartz
Clear or milky quartz threaded with black needles of tourmaline (schorl), combining quartz clarity with dramatic dark inclusions.
crystal
Minette
A dark, mica-rich lamprophyre dike rock in which biotite and augite phenocrysts sit in a groundmass dominated by alkali feldspar.
igneous
Lepidolite
A soft lithium-bearing mica with a lilac to purple color and pearly, flaky sheen, an important ore of lithium.
mineral
Kersantite
A dark mica lamprophyre with biotite and augite phenocrysts in a plagioclase-dominated groundmass, the feldspar counterpart of minette.
igneous
Soapstone
A soft, talc-rich metamorphic rock with a soapy feel, easily carved and highly heat-resistant for cookware and sculpture.
metamorphic
Tiger's Eye
A golden-brown chatoyant quartz with a shimmering silky band of light, formed when quartz replaces fibrous crocidolite.
gemstone
Sonoran Sunset Jasper
A vivid copper-bearing Mexican stone of red cuprite and green chrysocolla that evokes a desert sunset.
mineral
Latite
The fine-grained volcanic equivalent of monzonite, an intermediate lava with nearly equal feldspars and little free quartz.
igneous
Kiwi Jasper
A speckled green-and-black stone resembling kiwi fruit, technically a quartz-amazonite aggregate rather than true jasper.
mineral
Nordmarkite
A light-colored alkali quartz syenite dominated by perthitic feldspar with minor quartz, from the Oslo igneous province of Norway.
igneous
Amegreen
A natural bicolor quartz blending amethyst purple with prasiolite green in a single crystal, prized as a metaphysical heart-crown stone.
crystal
Dragon Vein Agate
A treated chalcedony with a network of crackled veins, usually heated and dyed in vivid colors for affordable, eye-catching beads.
gemstone