Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ rocks, minerals, crystals, and gemstones — with properties, formation, colors, hardness, and how to tell them apart.
Zebra Jasper
A black-and-white striped chalcedony-quartz rock whose bold zebra-like banding makes it a popular ornamental and lapidary stone.
sedimentary
Magnesite
A magnesium carbonate mineral, usually chalky white with grey veining, widely dyed to imitate turquoise and other stones.
mineral
Kyanite Schist
A mica schist containing bladed blue kyanite crystals, a marker of medium- to high-grade metamorphism of aluminous rocks.
metamorphic
White Agate
A white to grayish banded chalcedony, the natural base color of much agate and the substrate for many dyed stones.
gemstone
Unakite
An altered granite mottled pink and green from feldspar and epidote, popular as a tough, colorful ornamental rock.
metamorphic
Dragon Blood Jasper
A green-and-red ornamental stone of epidote and red piemontite or iron oxide, named for its dragon-skin coloring; not a true jasper.
metamorphic
Thulite
A pink, manganese-rich variety of zoisite used as an ornamental gemstone, often mottled with white quartz and grey matrix.
gemstone
Garnet Schist
A shiny, foliated schist studded with red garnet crystals that grew during medium-grade regional metamorphism.
metamorphic
Orange Tourmaline
A warm orange to tangerine tourmaline, an uncommon hue produced by manganese and iron in the crystal.
gemstone
Spodumene
Spodumene is a lithium aluminum silicate that is both a major lithium ore and the source of gem kunzite and hiddenite.
gemstone
Dumortierite
A hard aluminum borosilicate famous for its rich denim-blue color, often forming dense fibrous masses or coloring quartz blue.
mineral
Aquamarine Matrix
Aquamarine crystals still attached to their natural host rock, prized as mineral specimens showing beryl in its original pocket setting.
mineral
Tourmaline Schist
A foliated schist threaded with black tourmaline (schorl) needles, marking boron-rich metamorphic or metasomatic conditions.
metamorphic
Pelitic Schist
A schist derived from clay-rich sediments, rich in mica and often bearing index minerals like garnet, staurolite, or kyanite.
metamorphic
Adularia
A low-temperature potassium feldspar famous for forming transparent Alpine crystals and the gem moonstone, which shows a floating blue sheen called adularescence.
mineral
Amazonite
The blue-green gem variety of microcline feldspar, often mottled with white, prized as an affordable ornamental stone.
mineral
Frost Agate
A pale chalcedony agate with cloudy, frost-like white patterning suggesting frost on a window or icy crystalline textures.
gemstone
Chrysocolla
A vivid blue-green hydrated copper silicate, soft on its own but prized as a gem when hardened by intergrown quartz or chalcedony.
mineral
Particolored Tourmaline
A tourmaline displaying two or more distinct colors in a single crystal, prized for natural color zoning like watermelon and bicolor stones.
gemstone