Rock Identifier

Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia

Search and identify 1,000+ rocks, minerals, crystals, and gemstones — with properties, formation, colors, hardness, and how to tell them apart.

Dumortierite Quartz

Dumortierite Quartz

Quartz colored blue by inclusions of the mineral dumortierite, giving a denim-like blue ornamental stone harder than dumortierite alone.

gemstone
Blue Lace Agate

Blue Lace Agate

A soft sky-blue banded chalcedony prized for its delicate, lace-like white and blue swirling patterns.

gemstone
Pietersite

Pietersite

A brecciated, chatoyant quartz with swirling blue, gold, and brown fibers that shimmer like a stormy sky.

gemstone
Moonstone

Moonstone

A feldspar gem famous for adularescence, a floating blue-white glow that shimmers across the stone like moonlight.

gemstone
Bismuthinite

Bismuthinite

A soft lead-gray bismuth sulfide that is an important ore of bismuth, forming metallic needle-like and bladed crystals.

mineral
Peacock Ore

Peacock Ore

A copper-iron sulfide ore famous for its iridescent peacock-like purple and blue tarnish; often sold as treated chalcopyrite.

mineral
Desert Rose

Desert Rose

A rosette-shaped cluster of bladed gypsum or barite crystals that traps sand, forming flower-like formations in arid deserts.

mineral
Strawberry Quartz

Strawberry Quartz

A pink-to-red quartz colored by iron oxide inclusions that create a speckled, strawberry-like appearance within clear crystal.

crystal
Sylvanite

Sylvanite

A silver-white gold-silver telluride and important gold-silver ore, noted for crystals arranged in writing-like graphic patterns.

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
Faden Quartz

Faden Quartz

Tabular quartz crossed by a milky white thread-like line marking where the crystal repeatedly cracked and re-healed.

crystal
Pineapple Opal

Pineapple Opal

A rare opal pseudomorph from White Cliffs, Australia, formed as opal replaced clustered crystals into a pineapple-like shape.

gemstone
Chrome Diopside

Chrome Diopside

A vivid green chromium-bearing diopside, an affordable emerald-like gem mined largely in Siberia.

gemstone
Hawk's Eye

Hawk's Eye

The blue-grey relative of tiger's eye, a chatoyant quartz showing a shifting band of light like a bird of prey's eye.

gemstone

Rainforest Jasper

An Australian green rhyolite with eye-like orbs and earthy patterns marketed as jasper, evoking dense rainforest foliage.

igneous
Herkimer Diamond

Herkimer Diamond

Exceptionally clear, naturally double-terminated quartz crystals from Herkimer County, New York, prized for their diamond-like brilliance.

crystal
Cleavelandite

Cleavelandite

A striking platy, blade-like variety of albite feldspar that grows in fanned aggregates of thin white crystals within granite pegmatites.

mineral
Needle Tourmaline

Needle Tourmaline

Fine acicular (needle-like) tourmaline crystals, often black schorl, frequently seen as slender inclusions within clear quartz.

mineral
Hydrogrossular Garnet

Hydrogrossular Garnet

A water-bearing massive grossular garnet, usually green or pink, widely used as a tough jade-like carving stone.

gemstone
Tree Agate

Tree Agate

A white chalcedony filled with green or black dendritic, tree-like mineral inclusions that resemble ferns or moss frozen in stone.

gemstone
Larimar

Larimar

A rare sky-blue variety of pectolite found only in the Dominican Republic, prized for its sea-like color and white volcanic patterning.

gemstone
Prehnite

Prehnite

A translucent yellow-green silicate famous for its botryoidal 'grape' clusters, often hosting needle-like sprays of black epidote.

mineral

Frog Skin Jasper

A mottled green jasper whose blotchy spotting resembles frog skin, valued by lapidaries for its earthy, camouflage-like patterns.

gemstone
Chrome Tourmaline

Chrome Tourmaline

An intensely green tourmaline colored by chromium and vanadium, prized for its vivid emerald-like color from East Africa.

gemstone