Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ rocks, minerals, crystals, and gemstones — with properties, formation, colors, hardness, and how to tell them apart.
Clear Quartz
The pure, colorless form of crystalline quartz, valued for its clarity, abundance, and piezoelectric properties used in electronics.
crystal
Aquamarine Crystal
The blue iron-bearing variety of beryl, forming clear hexagonal crystals prized both as specimens and as a March birthstone gem.
crystal
Clear Beryl
Transparent, colorless beryl (goshenite), the pure form of the species valued for its clarity, hardness, and well-formed crystals.
gemstone
Tibetan Quartz
Clear quartz mined in the Himalayan region, often double-terminated and containing dark hematite or carbon inclusions.
crystal
Tangerine Quartz
Clear quartz coated with orange-red hematite, giving points a vivid tangerine color, mainly from Brazil.
crystal
Strawberry Quartz
A pink-to-red quartz colored by iron oxide inclusions that create a speckled, strawberry-like appearance within clear crystal.
crystal
Garden Quartz
Clear quartz filled with mineral inclusions that look like underwater gardens, mossy landscapes, or floating scenery.
crystal
Tourmalinated Quartz
Clear or milky quartz threaded with black needles of tourmaline (schorl), combining quartz clarity with dramatic dark inclusions.
crystal
Rutilated Quartz
Clear or smoky quartz threaded with golden to reddish needles of rutile, also poetically called Venus hair stone.
crystalLemurian Seed Quartz
Clear quartz crystals marked by distinctive horizontal ladder-like striations, popularized from Brazil as a metaphysical stone.
crystal
White Beryl
The colorless to milky-white variety of beryl, known mineralogically as goshenite and once used to imitate diamond and other gems.
gemstone
Star Aquamarine
A rare blue beryl that shows asterism, a moving star of light from intersecting sets of parallel inclusions, when cut as a cabochon.
gemstone
Aquamarine
The serene blue-to-sea-green variety of beryl, aquamarine is a durable gemstone colored by trace iron and birthstone for March.
gemstone
Maxixe Aquamarine
A deep blue beryl whose intense color comes from radiation-induced color centers and tends to fade in light, named after the Maxixe mine in Brazil.
gemstone
Brandberg Amethyst
A prized Namibian quartz combining amethyst, smoky, and clear quartz in single crystals, often with phantoms and enhydros.
crystal
Clear Obsidian
An unusually pure, transparent-to-translucent obsidian with few inclusions; truly water-clear specimens are rare in nature.
igneous
Herkimer Diamond
Exceptionally clear, naturally double-terminated quartz crystals from Herkimer County, New York, prized for their diamond-like brilliance.
crystal
Aquamarine Matrix
Aquamarine crystals still attached to their natural host rock, prized as mineral specimens showing beryl in its original pocket setting.
mineral
Clear Tourmaline
A transparent, water-clear elbaite tourmaline (achroite), the rare colorless and highly transparent form of the tourmaline group.
gemstoneTrapiche Aquamarine
A rare blue beryl showing a fixed six-spoke wheel pattern caused by impurity inclusions arranged along the crystal's growth axis.
gemstoneCat's Eye Aquamarine
Aquamarine that shows a bright moving band of light, or cat's eye, caused by parallel needle-like inclusions when cut as a cabochon.
gemstone
Needle Tourmaline
Fine acicular (needle-like) tourmaline crystals, often black schorl, frequently seen as slender inclusions within clear quartz.
mineral
Lemon Quartz
A vivid greenish-yellow quartz, usually heat-treated or irradiated, prized for its clean clarity and bright lemon color.
crystal
Snow Quartz
An opaque, snow-white variety of quartz whose milky color comes from countless tiny gas and fluid inclusions.
crystal