Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ rocks, minerals, crystals, and gemstones — with properties, formation, colors, hardness, and how to tell them apart.
Pisolite
A sedimentary rock built from pea-sized concentric spheres called pisoids, often carbonate but sometimes iron or aluminum-rich.
sedimentaryExotica Jasper
Also called Sci-Fi Jasper, a Mexican jasper-rhyolite with swirling abstract patterns in cream, tan, gray, pink, and green.
gemstone
Orange Garnet
A trade term for orange garnets, mainly manganese-rich spessartine and the brownish hessonite variety of grossular.
gemstone
Blue Sapphire
The blue gem variety of corundum, prized for its rich color, extreme hardness, and brilliance second only to diamond.
gemstoneReptile Jasper
A green-and-black mottled jasper whose scale-like patterning resembles reptile skin, often linked to Kambaba and crocodile jaspers.
mineral
Lindi Garnet
Lindi Garnet is a rare vanadium-rich color-change garnet from Tanzania's Lindi region, shifting from blue-green daylight tones to purple-red.
gemstone
Indian Agate
An affordable multicolored banded and mossy chalcedony from India, common in tumbled stones, beads, and meditation pieces.
gemstone
Oligoclase
A sodium-rich plagioclase feldspar between albite and andesine, parent of aventurescent sunstone and the bluish gem peristerite.
mineral
Cherry Creek Jasper
A landscape-patterned Chinese jasper prized for warm cherry-red, cream, and green bands resembling painted scenery.
mineral
Emerald Green Tourmaline
A richly saturated green variety of elbaite tourmaline whose color rivals emerald, colored by trace iron, chromium, or vanadium.
gemstone
Tinguaite
A fine-grained green phonolitic dike rock rich in nepheline and aegirine, the hypabyssal equivalent of phonolite.
igneousSonoran Sunset Jasper
A vivid copper-bearing Mexican stone of red cuprite and green chrysocolla that evokes a desert sunset.
mineral
Gahnite
A hard zinc-rich member of the spinel group, usually dark blue-green to black, forming octahedral crystals in metamorphic and pegmatitic rocks.
mineral
Black Tourmaline
The opaque black iron-rich variety of tourmaline (schorl), forming striated prismatic crystals popular as a protective grounding stone.
mineral
Labradorite
A plagioclase feldspar famous for labradorescence, a dramatic flash of iridescent blue, green, and gold across a dark gray stone.
mineral
Dragon Garnet
A trade name for deep wine-red garnet, typically a rich pyrope-almandine stone marketed for its dramatic, fiery color.
gemstone
Jade
A tough, prized ornamental gem that is actually two distinct minerals, jadeite and nephrite, revered for millennia in many cultures.
gemstone
Schist
A medium-grade metamorphic rock rich in aligned platy minerals that gives it a shiny, easily splitting, foliated texture.
metamorphic
Ocean Jasper
A multicolored orbicular chalcedony from Madagascar famous for its circular eye-like orbs in greens, pinks, whites, and yellows.
sedimentaryWillow Creek Jasper
A prized Idaho jasper known for porcelain-smooth pastel pinks, creams, and greens in soft swirling, orbicular patterns.
mineral
Lime Green Tourmaline
A bright, fresh lime to yellowish-green elbaite tourmaline (verdelite), colored by iron and trace manganese for a lively spring-green tone.
gemstone
Leopard Opal
A patterned common opal with mottled, leopard-like spots and blotches, prized as an ornamental and cabochon stone.
gemstone
Pelitic Schist
A schist derived from clay-rich sediments, rich in mica and often bearing index minerals like garnet, staurolite, or kyanite.
metamorphicFireworks Obsidian
Black volcanic glass dotted with radiating spherulite bursts that look like exploding fireworks frozen in the stone.
igneous