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.
crystal
Faden Quartz
Tabular quartz crossed by a milky white thread-like line marking where the crystal repeatedly cracked and re-healed.
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.
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Garden Quartz
Clear quartz filled with mineral inclusions that look like underwater gardens, mossy landscapes, or floating scenery.
crystal
Green Quartz
A green variety of macrocrystalline quartz, usually the heat- or radiation-altered prasiolite, prized for its soft mint hue.
crystal
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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Star Rose Quartz
Rose quartz that displays a six-rayed star (asterism) when cut as a cabochon, caused by microscopic rutile-like inclusions.
gemstone
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.
metamorphic
Graphic Feldspar
A pegmatite rock of feldspar intergrown with wedge-shaped quartz that resembles ancient runic or Hebrew writing.
igneousUnakite Jasper
An altered granite of pink feldspar, green epidote and quartz, mottled pink-and-green and popular as a tumbled and carving stone.
metamorphic
Albitite
A pale rock made almost entirely of the sodium feldspar albite, formed by sodic magmatism or sodium metasomatism.
igneous
Arkose
A coarse, feldspar-rich sandstone, often pink, that records rapid erosion of granitic source rock under arid conditions.
sedimentaryLuxullianite
A distinctive tourmaline-rich granite from Cornwall, prized as an ornamental stone for its pink feldspar set with radiating black tourmaline.
igneous
Larvikite
A Norwegian intrusive rock whose feldspar crystals flash silvery-blue, widely used as blue pearl granite countertops.
igneous
Unakite
An altered granite mottled pink and green from feldspar and epidote, popular as a tough, colorful ornamental rock.
metamorphic
Charnockite
A granite-like rock containing orthopyroxene, formed at high temperatures and pressures and often classed with the granulites.
igneous
Granodiorite
A common coarse-grained intrusive rock like granite but richer in plagioclase than potassium feldspar.
igneous
Graphite Schist
A dark, foliated schist rich in graphite that leaves a grey-black mark and forms from metamorphosed carbon-rich sediments.
metamorphic