Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia

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

Snow Quartz

An opaque, snow-white variety of quartz whose milky color comes from countless tiny gas and fluid inclusions.

A rare sky-blue variety of pectolite found only in the Dominican Republic, prized for its sea-like color and white volcanic patterning.

The red to raspberry-pink variety of tourmaline, prized for its vivid ruby-like color that holds under both daylight and artificial light.

An opaque, iron-rich variety of microcrystalline quartz known for its deep brick-red color and ancient history as a stone of strength and grounding.

A pastel purple variety of common opal, valued for its gentle lilac body color rather than any play-of-color.

A pink to red gem variety of elbaite tourmaline, colored by manganese, ranging from soft pastel pink to vivid rubellite red.

An old name for a dull leek-green variety of quartz or chalcedony colored by green mineral inclusions, historically called mother of emerald.

The classic green gem variety of elbaite tourmaline, ranging from bright grass-green to deep forest tones colored by iron or chromium.

An exceptionally hard beryllium aluminum oxide prized for golden hues, sharp cat's-eye effect, and the rare color-change alexandrite variety.

A soft mint-green variety of common opal, usually opaque and colored by trace copper or nontronite inclusions rather than play-of-color.

The blue color variety of beryl, ranging from pale sky tones to rich sea-blue, best known in its finest grades as aquamarine.

A broad family of vividly patterned jaspers from Madagascar, including orbicular and scenic varieties prized for colorful, eye-catching designs.

A marketing name for red beryl, the rare manganese-colored beryl from Utah, evoking emerald to convey its prestige and rarity.

An old varietal name for alkali- and cesium-rich beryl, typically colorless to pale pink, overlapping with vorobyevite and morganite.

The calcium-aluminum garnet species spanning green tsavorite, cinnamon hessonite, and colorless leuco garnet — one of the most varied garnets.