Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia

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

Rutilated Quartz

Clear or smoky quartz threaded with golden to reddish needles of rutile, also poetically called Venus hair stone.

An uncommon purple to violet tourmaline colored by manganese, the deeper reddish-purple stones sometimes called siberite.

A reddish-brown rare-earth phosphate that is a primary ore of cerium, thorium and other rare-earth elements, often found in placer sands.

A rare garnet that dramatically shifts color from greenish in daylight to reddish under lamplight, rivaling alexandrite.

A pleochroic aluminum silicate that flashes green and reddish-brown from different angles, with a cross-marked variety called chiastolite.

Agate that was shattered and naturally re-cemented by silica, creating a mosaic of angular fragments in a quartz matrix.

Tabular quartz crossed by a milky white thread-like line marking where the crystal repeatedly cracked and re-healed.

A fractured and re-cemented agate whose angular broken bands resemble crumbling walls and ruined cityscapes when polished.