Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ rocks, minerals, crystals, and gemstones — with properties, formation, colors, hardness, and how to tell them apart.
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.
crystalQuartz Arenite
A clean, mature sandstone made almost entirely of quartz grains, representing extreme weathering, sorting, and recycling of sediment.
sedimentary
Garden Quartz
Clear quartz filled with mineral inclusions that look like underwater gardens, mossy landscapes, or floating scenery.
crystal
Faden Quartz
Tabular quartz crossed by a milky white thread-like line marking where the crystal repeatedly cracked and re-healed.
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.
crystalCandle 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
Tibetan Quartz
Clear quartz mined in the Himalayan region, often double-terminated and containing dark hematite or carbon inclusions.
crystal
Phantom Quartz
Quartz containing visible internal crystal outlines, formed when growth paused and trapped a layer of mineral 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
Kersantite
A dark mica lamprophyre with biotite and augite phenocrysts in a plagioclase-dominated groundmass, the feldspar counterpart of minette.
igneous
Cathedral Quartz
Quartz with a stepped, multi-pointed structure of parallel side crystals resembling the spires of a cathedral.
crystal
Tourmalinated Quartz
Clear or milky quartz threaded with black needles of tourmaline (schorl), combining quartz clarity with dramatic dark inclusions.
crystal
Andalusite
A pleochroic aluminum silicate that flashes green and reddish-brown from different angles, with a cross-marked variety called chiastolite.
mineral
Minette
A dark, mica-rich lamprophyre dike rock in which biotite and augite phenocrysts sit in a groundmass dominated by alkali feldspar.
igneous
Alnöite
A rare dark ultramafic lamprophyre rich in melilite, biotite and olivine, named for Alnö Island in Sweden.
igneous
Soapstone
A soft, talc-rich metamorphic rock with a soapy feel, easily carved and highly heat-resistant for cookware and sculpture.
metamorphic
Greenschist
A green, foliated low-grade metamorphic rock colored by chlorite, actinolite, and epidote, marking the greenschist metamorphic facies.
metamorphicWhiteschist
A rare high-pressure metamorphic schist defined by the diagnostic assemblage of talc plus kyanite, often pale and silvery.
metamorphic