Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ rocks, minerals, crystals, and gemstones — with properties, formation, colors, hardness, and how to tell them apart.
Girasol Quartz
A translucent milky quartz that shows a soft, floating blue-white glow when light passes through it.
crystal
Garden Quartz
Clear quartz filled with mineral inclusions that look like underwater gardens, mossy landscapes, or floating scenery.
crystal
Clear Quartz
The pure, colorless form of crystalline quartz, valued for its clarity, abundance, and piezoelectric properties used in electronics.
crystal
Cathedral Quartz
Quartz with a stepped, multi-pointed structure of parallel side crystals resembling the spires of a cathedral.
crystal
Blue Quartz
A naturally blue quartz colored by tiny mineral inclusions such as dumortierite or scattered rutile and tourmaline fibers.
crystal
Priday Plume Agate
A classic Oregon plume agate from the Priday Ranch beds, showing feathery mineral plumes suspended in translucent chalcedony.
gemstone
Montana Moss Agate
A translucent chalcedony from Montana filled with black and red dendritic inclusions that look like moss, ferns, or scenic landscapes.
gemstone
Lake Michigan Agate
Glacially deposited banded agates found along Lake Michigan beaches, small waterworn pebbles with concentric red and grey banding.
gemstone
Crazy Lace Agate
A Mexican banded agate famous for tightly swirling, contorted lacy patterns in warm reds, creams, and golds.
mineral
Carey Plume Agate
A prized plume agate from near Carey, Idaho, showing red, pink and black feathery plumes floating in translucent chalcedony.
gemstone
Sard
A brownish-red to deep brown variety of chalcedony, closely related to carnelian but darker, colored by iron oxides.
mineral
Snake Skin Agate
A chalcedony with a distinctive scaly, reptile-skin surface texture, typically in pale tan, pink, and gray tones.
gemstone
Swazi Lace Agate
A swirling, intricately banded lace agate from Eswatini (Swaziland) in soft greys, blues and lavenders with delicate folded patterns.
gemstone
Owyhee Blue Agate
A soft sky-blue chalcedony from the Owyhee region of Oregon and Idaho, prized for its calming, opaque powder-blue color.
gemstone
Mexican Lace Agate
A vividly swirling banded agate from northern Mexico with intricate looping patterns in warm reds, golds and creams.
gemstone
Blue Lace Agate
A soft sky-blue banded chalcedony prized for its delicate, lace-like white and blue swirling patterns.
gemstone
Lemurian Seed Quartz
Clear quartz crystals marked by distinctive horizontal ladder-like striations, popularized from Brazil as a metaphysical stone.
crystal
Star Rose Quartz
Rose quartz that displays a six-rayed star (asterism) when cut as a cabochon, caused by microscopic rutile-like inclusions.
gemstone
Chalcedony
A waxy, translucent microcrystalline form of quartz that serves as the parent group for agate, jasper, carnelian, and onyx.
mineral
Quartz-mica Schist
A foliated metamorphic rock of interlayered quartz and mica, producing a sparkling, easily split rock from metamorphosed sandy shales.
metamorphic
Red Sandstone
Iron-stained sandstone whose red color comes from hematite coatings, formed in oxidizing desert, river, and coastal environments.
sedimentary
Black Onyx
A solid jet-black chalcedony, usually a dyed and treated agate, prized for sleek polished beads, cabochons, and intaglios.
gemstone
Flame Jasper
A fiery jasper whose red, orange, and yellow plumes lick across the stone like flames against an earthy background.
mineral
Orange Obsidian
Obsidian colored orange by iron oxide inclusions; vivid uniform orange material is frequently manufactured glass rather than volcanic.
igneous