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 Jasper

A prized Mexican jasper known for pastel green, lavender, and cream orbicular patterns that take an exceptional polish.

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

A vivid copper-bearing Mexican stone of red cuprite and green chrysocolla that evokes a desert sunset.

A single beryl crystal showing two distinct color zones, such as aquamarine blue grading into morganite pink, within one stone.

A medium-grade metamorphic rock rich in aligned platy minerals that gives it a shiny, easily splitting, foliated texture.

A tough, prized ornamental gem that is actually two distinct minerals, jadeite and nephrite, revered for millennia in many cultures.

A rare garnet that dramatically shifts color from greenish in daylight to reddish under lamplight, rivaling alexandrite.

A prized Idaho jasper known for porcelain-smooth pastel pinks, creams, and greens in soft swirling, orbicular patterns.

A multicolored orbicular chalcedony from Madagascar famous for its circular eye-like orbs in greens, pinks, whites, and yellows.

Tourmaline colored by copper, producing the famous vivid neon blues, greens and teals known commercially as Paraiba-type gems.

A colorful trade-name material, often dyed and reconstituted, sold as jasper; vivid blues and greens are typically artificially enhanced.