Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ rocks, minerals, crystals, and gemstones — with properties, formation, colors, hardness, and how to tell them apart.
Bostonite
A fine-grained, feldspar-rich dike rock with a trachytic texture, essentially a hypabyssal equivalent of trachyte or syenite.
igneous
Prasiolite
A pale green variety of quartz, usually created by heat-treating amethyst, often marketed as green amethyst.
gemstoneGondite
A metamorphic rock made chiefly of manganese-rich spessartine garnet and quartz, formed from ancient manganese-bearing sediments.
metamorphic
Chevron Amethyst
A naturally banded quartz combining purple amethyst and white quartz in striking V-shaped chevron or zigzag patterns.
crystalSesame Jasper
A finely speckled pale jasper trade stone named for its sesame-seed-like flecks, closely related to Kiwi Jasper.
mineral
Limburgite
A dark, glass-rich volcanic rock of olivine and augite phenocrysts set in a feldspar-free glassy groundmass, named from the Kaiserstuhl region.
igneous
Feldspathic Sandstone
A feldspar-rich sandstone, often pink, that points to granitic source rocks eroded quickly in dry or cold climates.
sedimentary
Mariposite
A green, gold-associated metamorphic rock made of chrome-rich mica and quartz, named for Mariposa County in California's gold country.
metamorphic
Carnelian
A warm orange-to-red variety of chalcedony quartz colored by iron oxide, used since antiquity for seals, beads, and cabochons.
gemstone
Needle Tourmaline
Fine acicular (needle-like) tourmaline crystals, often black schorl, frequently seen as slender inclusions within clear quartz.
mineral
Brandberg Amethyst
A prized Namibian quartz combining amethyst, smoky, and clear quartz in single crystals, often with phantoms and enhydros.
crystal
Moonstone
A feldspar gem famous for adularescence, a floating blue-white glow that shimmers across the stone like moonlight.
gemstonePeach Moonstone
A warm peach-to-apricot variety of moonstone feldspar showing a soft billowy sheen (adularescence) caused by internal light scattering.
gemstoneSuper Seven
A trade name for quartz containing a combination of seven minerals including amethyst, smoky quartz, and cacoxenite, prized by collectors.
crystal
Khondalite
A high-grade metamorphic gneiss of garnet, sillimanite, quartz, and graphite, derived from ancient aluminous sediments.
metamorphicSandstone
A clastic sedimentary rock made of cemented sand grains, often quartz, recording ancient beaches, deserts, and rivers.
sedimentary
Cleavelandite
A striking platy, blade-like variety of albite feldspar that grows in fanned aggregates of thin white crystals within granite pegmatites.
mineral
Dalmatian Stone
A cream-colored feldspar-and-quartz rock peppered with dark spots, named for its resemblance to a Dalmatian dog.
igneous
Belomorite
A regional Russian name for a moonstone-like plagioclase from the White Sea coast, prized for its bluish, slightly iridescent schiller.
gemstone
Quartzite Sandstone
A tough, quartz-rich sandstone cemented by silica, transitional toward true quartzite but still sedimentary in origin.
sedimentary
Green Moonstone
A pale green variety of feldspar moonstone showing a soft white or bluish adularescent sheen over a greenish body.
gemstone
Quartzite
An extremely hard metamorphic rock formed from sandstone, made of fused quartz grains that break across rather than between the grains.
metamorphic
Granite
A coarse-grained, speckled intrusive rock built from quartz, feldspar, and mica, forming the bedrock of the continents.
igneous
Porphyritic Obsidian
Natural volcanic glass speckled with embedded mineral crystals (phenocrysts) such as feldspar or cristobalite that grew before the lava chilled.
igneous