Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ rocks, minerals, crystals, and gemstones — with properties, formation, colors, hardness, and how to tell them apart.
Morganite
The pink-to-peach variety of beryl colored by manganese, popular for romantic engagement jewelry.
gemstone
Blue Beryl
The blue color variety of beryl, ranging from pale sky tones to rich sea-blue, best known in its finest grades as aquamarine.
gemstone
Pink Emerald
A trade name sometimes used for pink beryl (morganite), the manganese-colored rose-to-peach variety of the emerald mineral.
gemstone
Green Beryl
Light green beryl colored mainly by iron, distinguished from emerald, which owes its deeper green to chromium or vanadium.
gemstone
Cat's Eye Beryl
Beryl displaying chatoyancy, a bright moving band of light, caused by parallel tube-like inclusions when cut as a cabochon.
gemstone
White Beryl
The colorless to milky-white variety of beryl, known mineralogically as goshenite and once used to imitate diamond and other gems.
gemstone
Clear Beryl
Transparent, colorless beryl (goshenite), the pure form of the species valued for its clarity, hardness, and well-formed crystals.
gemstone
Mookaite
A vivid Australian jasper-like silica stone in earthy reds, yellows, and purples, formed from silicified radiolarian sediment.
mineral
Trapiche Beryl
Beryl displaying a fixed six-spoke wheel pattern from impurity inclusions, most famous in Colombian trapiche emerald.
gemstone
Bamboo Agate
An agate whose layered, segmented banding resembles the jointed stalks and leaves of bamboo.
gemstone
Carey Plume Agate
A prized plume agate from near Carey, Idaho, showing red, pink and black feathery plumes floating in translucent chalcedony.
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
Unakite
An altered granite mottled pink and green from feldspar and epidote, popular as a tough, colorful ornamental rock.
metamorphic
Dalmatian Stone
A cream-colored feldspar-and-quartz rock peppered with dark spots, named for its resemblance to a Dalmatian dog.
igneous
Pigeon Blood Agate
A richly colored red banded agate prized by lapidaries for its deep crimson-to-brown tones reminiscent of pigeon's blood.
gemstone
Riband Agate
A banded chalcedony with straight, ribbon-like parallel layers, often cut across the bands for striking striped cabochons.
gemstone
Menilite Opal
An opaque grey-brown common opal forming nodules and concretions, historically called liver opal for its dull brownish color.
mineral
Bloodstone
A dark green chalcedony speckled with blood-red spots of iron oxide, traditionally known as heliotrope.
gemstone
Jaspillite
A banded, metamorphosed iron formation in which bright red jasper alternates with silvery hematite or magnetite layers.
metamorphic
Chalcedony
A waxy, translucent microcrystalline form of quartz that serves as the parent group for agate, jasper, carnelian, and onyx.
mineral
Turritella Agate
A brown fossiliferous chalcedony packed with spiral freshwater snail shells, technically agatized fossil rock from Wyoming.
sedimentary
Rhyolite
A fine-grained, silica-rich volcanic rock that is the extrusive equivalent of granite, often pale, banded, or flow-textured.
igneous
Chert
A hard, fine-grained sedimentary silica rock that breaks with sharp conchoidal edges, prized by ancient toolmakers.
sedimentary
Pink Opal
A soft pink common opal, most famously from Peru, valued for its gentle pastel color rather than play-of-color.
gemstone