Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ rocks, minerals, crystals, and gemstones — with properties, formation, colors, hardness, and how to tell them apart.
Crazy Lace Agate
A Mexican banded agate famous for tightly swirling, contorted lacy patterns in warm reds, creams, and golds.
mineralKnorringite
A chromium-rich magnesium garnet of the pyrope series that crystallizes in the deep mantle and is a valuable diamond indicator mineral.
mineral
Blue Sapphire
The blue gem variety of corundum, prized for its rich color, extreme hardness, and brilliance second only to diamond.
gemstoneGraveyard Point Agate
A celebrated plume agate from the Oregon-Idaho border, known for dramatic black, gold, and red plumes in clear chalcedony.
gemstone
Adirondack Garnet
Adirondack Garnet is large, dark-red almandine from New York's Gore Mountain, the world's most famous industrial garnet abrasive source.
mineral
Condor Agate
A vividly banded fortification agate from Argentina prized for its bold red, gold and white concentric patterns.
gemstoneSunset Agate
A warmly colored chalcedony agate with reds, oranges, golds, and pinks that blend like the glowing bands of a sunset sky.
gemstone
Green Aventurine
A green quartz speckled with shimmering fuchsite mica that produces a glittering aventurescence, popular as an affordable ornamental stone.
mineral
Pele's Hair
Fine, golden, hair-like strands of basaltic volcanic glass spun from fluid lava droplets during eruptions, named for the Hawaiian volcano goddess.
igneous
Sphalerite
Zinc sulfide and the chief ore of zinc, prized when transparent for its extreme fire that exceeds diamond.
mineral
Grape Agate
Clusters of tiny botryoidal chalcedony spheres resembling bunches of grapes, famously purple, found in Indonesia.
mineral
Yellow Garnet
A trade term for yellow garnets, including golden grossular, yellow andradite (topazolite), and yellow-green Mali garnet.
gemstone
White Beryl
The colorless to milky-white variety of beryl, known mineralogically as goshenite and once used to imitate diamond and other gems.
gemstone
Anorthite
The calcium end-member of the plagioclase feldspar series, a high-temperature mineral common in mafic rocks, meteorites and lunar samples.
mineral
Dumortierite Quartz
Quartz colored blue by inclusions of the mineral dumortierite, giving a denim-like blue ornamental stone harder than dumortierite alone.
gemstoneAutumn Jasper
A warm-toned jasper named for its autumn-leaf palette of browns, rust, gold, and cream, popular as soothing earth-tone beads.
mineral
Titanite
A calcium titanium silicate, gem-known as sphene, famous for fiery dispersion that exceeds diamond and rich green-to-yellow colors.
gemstone
Matrix Opal
Opal in which precious play-of-color is intimately dispersed through the pores of its host rock rather than forming a solid seam.
gemstone
Andradite Garnet
The calcium-iron garnet species, ranging from brilliant green demantoid to golden topazolite and jet-black melanite.
gemstoneGrape Garnet
A trademarked deep purple-red rhodolite garnet from India, named for its rich grape-like color from the pyrope-almandine series.
gemstone
Argillite
Hardened, fine-grained mudrock intermediate between shale and slate, dense and non-fissile, often carved into ornaments.
sedimentary
Phantom Quartz
Quartz containing visible internal crystal outlines, formed when growth paused and trapped a layer of mineral inclusions.
crystalGrandite Garnet
Grandite is an intermediate garnet between grossular and andradite, common in skarns and prized for vivid green to golden crystals.
mineral
London Blue Topaz
The deepest, most saturated blue grade of treated topaz, prized for its rich steely-blue color and durability in jewelry.
gemstone