Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ rocks, minerals, crystals, and gemstones — with properties, formation, colors, hardness, and how to tell them apart.
Microcline
A common potassium feldspar identical in composition to orthoclase but more ordered, famous for its green gem variety amazonite.
mineral
Flame Agate
A chalcedony agate with red, orange, and yellow plume or banding patterns that rise like dancing flames within the stone.
gemstone
Hydrogrossular Garnet
A water-bearing massive grossular garnet, usually green or pink, widely used as a tough jade-like carving stone.
gemstone
Landscape Opal
A common opal containing dendritic or mossy mineral inclusions that form miniature landscape-like scenes inside the stone.
gemstoneFlame Jasper
A fiery jasper whose red, orange, and yellow plumes lick across the stone like flames against an earthy background.
mineralAlabaster
A soft, fine-grained, translucent form of gypsum (or banded calcite) long prized as a carving and ornamental stone.
mineral
Garnet
A group of silicate gemstones best known for deep red but spanning nearly every color, including green tsavorite and orange spessartine.
gemstone
Tree Agate
A white chalcedony filled with green or black dendritic, tree-like mineral inclusions that resemble ferns or moss frozen in stone.
gemstone
Dumortierite Quartz
Quartz colored blue by inclusions of the mineral dumortierite, giving a denim-like blue ornamental stone harder than dumortierite alone.
gemstoneOnyx Marble
Translucent banded calcium-carbonate stone deposited in caves and springs, prized for ornamental carvings despite its softness.
sedimentaryParticolored Tourmaline
A tourmaline displaying two or more distinct colors in a single crystal, prized for natural color zoning like watermelon and bicolor stones.
gemstone
Granodiorite
A common coarse-grained intrusive rock like granite but richer in plagioclase than potassium feldspar.
igneous
Rhyolite
A fine-grained, silica-rich volcanic rock that is the extrusive equivalent of granite, often pale, banded, or flow-textured.
igneous
Calc-Silicate Rock
A metamorphic rock of calcium-rich silicate minerals formed from impure limestone or dolomite altered by heat and fluids.
metamorphic
Cleavelandite
A striking platy, blade-like variety of albite feldspar that grows in fanned aggregates of thin white crystals within granite pegmatites.
mineral
Granulite
A high-grade metamorphic rock formed in the deep, hot crust, marked by anhydrous minerals like pyroxene and garnet.
metamorphic
Cactus Quartz
A South African quartz whose central crystal is coated in a cactus-like crust of tiny secondary points, also called spirit quartz.
crystal
Perlite
A hydrated volcanic glass with pearly, onion-like concentric cracks that pops into lightweight white granules when heated.
igneousFireworks Obsidian
Black volcanic glass dotted with radiating spherulite bursts that look like exploding fireworks frozen in the stone.
igneousLemurian Seed Quartz
Clear quartz crystals marked by distinctive horizontal ladder-like striations, popularized from Brazil as a metaphysical stone.
crystal
Mookaite
A vivid Australian jasper-like silica stone in earthy reds, yellows, and purples, formed from silicified radiolarian sediment.
mineral
Flower Agate
A creamy pink-and-white chalcedony from Madagascar containing flower-like plume inclusions that resemble blossoms suspended in stone.
gemstoneSpiderweb Jasper
A jasper crossed by fine dark veins forming a spiderweb-like network, often a brecciated stone cemented by darker matrix.
mineralSesame Jasper
A finely speckled pale jasper trade stone named for its sesame-seed-like flecks, closely related to Kiwi Jasper.
mineral