Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia

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

Imperial Garnet

A trade name for high-brilliance golden grossular-andradite (grandite) garnet, most associated with the Mali deposits of West Africa.

A soft brownish-golden garnet named for its champagne color, usually a malaia-type pyrope-spessartine blend prized for warm, neutral tones.

The magnesium-rich brown member of the tourmaline group, named for Austria's Drava River and prized for warm earthy tones.

A rare boron-bearing feldspar, the boron analogue of albite, first found in oil-shale nodules of the Green River Formation.

Smithsonite is a zinc carbonate ore famous for glassy botryoidal crusts in blue-green, pink, and yellow hues.

A rare Australian jasper from the Pilbara with bold red, yellow, and black abstract patterns, prized by collectors.

A nickel sulfide famous for delicate brass-yellow hairlike crystals that form radiating sprays inside cavities and geodes.

A lead phosphate secondary mineral known for barrel-shaped green to yellow crystals formed in oxidized lead deposits.

A translucent to transparent opal in warm yellow, orange, and red tones, prized for body color rather than play-of-color.

A rare translucent yellow-green volcanic glass from the Macusani region of Peru, valued by faceters and sometimes confused with tektites.

A yellow-brown alteration material formed when basaltic volcanic glass reacts with water, common in hydrovolcanic tuffs and pillow lavas.

An opal cut to show chatoyancy, a sharp moving band of light like a cat's eye, usually in honey, green or yellow common opal.