Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia

Search and identify 1,000+ rocks, minerals, crystals, and gemstones — with properties, formation, colors, hardness, and how to tell them apart.

Bamboo Agate

An agate whose layered, segmented banding resembles the jointed stalks and leaves of bamboo.

A banded chalcedony with straight, ribbon-like parallel layers, often cut across the bands for striking striped cabochons.

A hard, fine-grained sedimentary silica rock that breaks with sharp conchoidal edges, prized by ancient toolmakers.

A prized plume agate from near Carey, Idaho, showing red, pink and black feathery plumes floating in translucent chalcedony.

An altered granite mottled pink and green from feldspar and epidote, popular as a tough, colorful ornamental rock.

A brown fossiliferous chalcedony packed with spiral freshwater snail shells, technically agatized fossil rock from Wyoming.

A soft sky-blue chalcedony from the Owyhee region of Oregon and Idaho, prized for its calming, opaque powder-blue color.

A richly colored red banded agate prized by lapidaries for its deep crimson-to-brown tones reminiscent of pigeon's blood.

Ancient chemically deposited rock of alternating iron-oxide and silica bands recording Earth's early oxygenation and a major iron ore source.

A soft pale-blue calcium sulfate, the anhydrous form of gypsum, prized as a gentle, calming tumbled stone.

A soft mint-to-apple-green variety of calcite, a common calcium carbonate mineral popular as soothing tumbled stones.

An affordable multicolored banded and mossy chalcedony from India, common in tumbled stones, beads, and meditation pieces.

A soft, soothing powder-blue variety of calcite, a common calcium carbonate mineral often sold as gentle tumbled stones.

A richly saturated green variety of elbaite tourmaline whose color rivals emerald, colored by trace iron, chromium, or vanadium.