Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ rocks, minerals, crystals, and gemstones — with properties, formation, colors, hardness, and how to tell them apart.
Peanut Wood Jasper
A fossilized, silicified wood from Australia with white peanut-shaped spots, formed where ancient driftwood was bored by clams and filled with pale sediment.
gemstone
Leopard Skin Jasper
A spotted jasper-rhyolite patterned with leopard-like rings and ovals, valued as an earthy ornamental and lapidary stone.
sedimentary
Cave Creek Jasper
An opaque jasper from the Cave Creek area of Arizona, prized for earthy mottled and banded patterns in warm desert tones.
mineralFrog Skin Jasper
A mottled green jasper whose blotchy spotting resembles frog skin, valued by lapidaries for its earthy, camouflage-like patterns.
gemstoneDragon Blood Jasper
A green-and-red ornamental stone of epidote and red piemontite or iron oxide, named for its dragon-skin coloring; not a true jasper.
metamorphicStarry Night Jasper
A dark jasper trade stone speckled with pale flecks resembling a starry night sky, valued for its cosmic appearance.
mineralOwyhee Blue Jasper
A soft blue-gray jasper from the Owyhee region of Oregon and Idaho, prized for its rare, calming blue tones among earthy jaspers.
gemstone
Cherry Creek Jasper
A landscape-patterned Chinese jasper prized for warm cherry-red, cream, and green bands resembling painted scenery.
mineralWillow Creek Jasper
A prized Idaho jasper known for porcelain-smooth pastel pinks, creams, and greens in soft swirling, orbicular patterns.
mineral
Yellow Garnet
A trade term for yellow garnets, including golden grossular, yellow andradite (topazolite), and yellow-green Mali garnet.
gemstoneGreen Jade
The classic green ornamental gem, either jadeite or nephrite, valued for millennia for its toughness and rich color, especially imperial green.
gemstoneMalaia Garnet
A pyrope-spessartine garnet in warm peach, salmon, and pinkish-orange tones, originally rejected by dealers and named 'malaia,' Swahili for outcast.
gemstone
Topaz
A hard, brilliant fluorosilicate gemstone occurring in many colors, from precious golden imperial topaz to popular blue topaz.
gemstone
Chrome Diopside
A vivid green chromium-bearing diopside, an affordable emerald-like gem mined largely in Siberia.
gemstone
Mookaite
A vivid Australian jasper-like silica stone in earthy reds, yellows, and purples, formed from silicified radiolarian sediment.
mineral
Jadeite
The rarer and more valuable of the two jade minerals, prized for its translucent emerald-green 'imperial' color and extreme toughness.
gemstone
Jade
A tough, prized ornamental gem that is actually two distinct minerals, jadeite and nephrite, revered for millennia in many cultures.
gemstone
Jaspillite
A banded, metamorphosed iron formation in which bright red jasper alternates with silvery hematite or magnetite layers.
metamorphic
Bloodstone
A dark green chalcedony speckled with blood-red spots of iron oxide, traditionally known as heliotrope.
gemstone
Dalmatian Stone
A cream-colored feldspar-and-quartz rock peppered with dark spots, named for its resemblance to a Dalmatian dog.
igneous
Menilite Opal
An opaque grey-brown common opal forming nodules and concretions, historically called liver opal for its dull brownish color.
mineral
Chalcedony
A waxy, translucent microcrystalline form of quartz that serves as the parent group for agate, jasper, carnelian, and onyx.
mineralBamboo Agate
An agate whose layered, segmented banding resembles the jointed stalks and leaves of bamboo.
gemstone
Rhyolite
A fine-grained, silica-rich volcanic rock that is the extrusive equivalent of granite, often pale, banded, or flow-textured.
igneous