Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ rocks, minerals, crystals, and gemstones — with properties, formation, colors, hardness, and how to tell them apart.
Umbalite Garnet
A delicate pink to lavender garnet from Tanzania's Umba Valley, a pyrope-spessartine blend often marketed as a soft, light-toned rhodolite.
gemstone
Orange Garnet
A trade term for orange garnets, mainly manganese-rich spessartine and the brownish hessonite variety of grossular.
gemstoneMontana Garnet
Montana Garnet is red almandine recovered from Montana placer gravels, often alongside the state's famous sapphires.
gemstone
Spessartite Garnet
A manganese aluminum garnet glowing in vivid orange to reddish-orange tones, with the finest called mandarin garnet.
gemstone
Melanite Garnet
The titanium-rich black variety of andradite garnet, with a brilliant resinous luster prized for mourning and statement jewelry.
gemstone
Uvarovite Garnet
The rare calcium-chromium garnet, famous for its sparkling emerald-green druzy crusts of tiny crystals, the only consistently green garnet.
mineral
Demantoid Garnet
A rare green andradite garnet famed for fire exceeding diamond and distinctive horsetail inclusions in Russian stones.
gemstoneBekily Garnet
A rare color-change garnet from Bekily, Madagascar, shifting from bluish-green in daylight to purplish-red under warm light, including the famed blue garnets.
gemstone
Ugrandite Garnet
Ugrandite is the calcium garnet series uniting uvarovite, grossular, and andradite, including tsavorite and the fiery demantoid.
mineralGooseberry Garnet
Gooseberry Garnet is a soft green grossular garnet named for its resemblance to the pale, translucent green of ripe gooseberries.
gemstone
Bohemian Garnet
Small, intensely red chrome-pyrope garnets from the Czech Bohemian region, famous for densely set antique Victorian jewelry.
gemstone
Color Change Garnet
A rare garnet that dramatically shifts color from greenish in daylight to reddish under lamplight, rivaling alexandrite.
gemstone
Merelani Mint Garnet
A delicate vanadium-colored mint-green grossular garnet from the Merelani Hills of Tanzania, the source of tanzanite.
gemstone
Yttrium Aluminum Garnet
A synthetic garnet-structured oxide (YAG) used as a diamond simulant and laser crystal, with no natural counterpart.
gemstoneMasasi Blue Garnet
Masasi Blue Garnet is a rare vanadium-bearing color-change garnet from Tanzania that appears blue-green by day and purplish-red indoors.
gemstone
Ant Hill Garnet
Small, bright chrome-pyrope garnets famously brought to the surface by harvester ants on the Navajo lands of Arizona.
gemstoneStarburst Agate
Agate containing radiating sprays of mineral needles that fan out like bursting stars within the chalcedony.
gemstoneTrapiche Aquamarine
A rare blue beryl showing a fixed six-spoke wheel pattern caused by impurity inclusions arranged along the crystal's growth axis.
gemstone
Trapiche Tourmaline
A rare tourmaline showing a fixed wheel-like pattern of color zones and arms radiating from the crystal's center.
gemstone
Sapphire
The gem variety of corundum in every color except red, most prized in velvety blue and exceptionally hard and durable.
gemstone
Trapiche Emerald
A rare emerald showing a six-spoked star pattern of dark inclusions, named after the spokes of a sugar-mill wheel.
gemstoneCandle Quartz
A quartz with a main point surrounded by many smaller crystals along its sides, resembling melted candle wax, mainly from Madagascar.
crystal
Majorite
An ultra-high-pressure garnet with silicon in the octahedral site, formed in the deep mantle transition zone and in shocked meteorites.
mineralHutcheonite
A titanium-aluminum garnet discovered in calcium-aluminum inclusions of the Allende meteorite, recording the earliest history of the solar system.
mineral