Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ rocks, minerals, crystals, and gemstones — with properties, formation, colors, hardness, and how to tell them apart.
Peach Garnet
A soft peach to pinkish-orange garnet, usually a malaia-type pyrope-spessartine blend prized for its warm, delicate color.
gemstoneSkutterudite
A metallic cobalt-nickel arsenide, an important cobalt ore, named for the Skutterud mines of Norway.
mineralHoney Garnet
A warm golden-brown garnet named for its honey color, typically a hessonite grossular variety with a distinctive treacly internal texture.
gemstoneIndian Agate
An affordable multicolored banded and mossy chalcedony from India, common in tumbled stones, beads, and meditation pieces.
gemstoneGreen Agate
A green-hued banded chalcedony, ranging from natural soft greens to brightly dyed commercial stones.
gemstoneMagnesite
A magnesium carbonate mineral, usually chalky white with grey veining, widely dyed to imitate turquoise and other stones.
mineralPlume Agate
A translucent agate containing delicate three-dimensional feather- or plant-like plumes of mineral inclusions suspended in chalcedony.
gemstoneLandscape Agate
A translucent chalcedony agate whose mineral inclusions form miniature scenes resembling mountains, trees, deserts, and skies.
gemstoneAgate
A banded variety of chalcedony quartz, famed for its colorful concentric layers and enormous range of patterns and colors.
mineralBrecciated Agate
Agate that was shattered and naturally re-cemented by silica, creating a mosaic of angular fragments in a quartz matrix.
gemstonePaintbrush Agate
A plume agate whose inclusions form upright, bristly clusters resembling the strokes of a paintbrush.
gemstoneGoshenite
The colorless variety of beryl, named after Goshen, Massachusetts, prized for its purity, clarity, and durability.
gemstonePrase
An old name for a dull leek-green variety of quartz or chalcedony colored by green mineral inclusions, historically called mother of emerald.
crystalFlame Agate
A chalcedony agate with red, orange, and yellow plume or banding patterns that rise like dancing flames within the stone.
gemstoneClear Beryl
Transparent, colorless beryl (goshenite), the pure form of the species valued for its clarity, hardness, and well-formed crystals.
gemstoneSylvanite
A silver-white gold-silver telluride and important gold-silver ore, noted for crystals arranged in writing-like graphic patterns.
mineralCinnamon Stone
The warm cinnamon-to-honey-brown variety of grossular garnet, also known as hessonite, with a characteristic swirly internal texture.
gemstoneSnake Skin Agate
A chalcedony with a distinctive scaly, reptile-skin surface texture, typically in pale tan, pink, and gray tones.
gemstoneHolley Blue Agate
A rare translucent lavender-blue agate from the Holley area of Oregon, prized for its soft purple-blue color.
gemstoneRuin Agate
A fractured and re-cemented agate whose angular broken bands resemble crumbling walls and ruined cityscapes when polished.
gemstoneHowlite
A white, porous borate mineral webbed with gray-black veins, widely dyed to imitate turquoise and other stones.
mineralPeach Opal
A gentle peach-to-apricot opal, mostly common opal colored by trace iron, prized for its soft warm pastel body.
gemstoneMocha Agate
A pale translucent chalcedony threaded with brown-black manganese and iron dendrites that mimic tiny ferns, mosses or landscapes.
gemstoneMilky Quartz
The most common variety of quartz, milky white from microscopic fluid and gas inclusions, forming massive veins worldwide.
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