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
Tibetan Quartz
Clear quartz mined in the Himalayan region, often double-terminated and containing dark hematite or carbon inclusions.
crystal
Smoky Quartz
The smoky brown to gray variety of quartz, colored by natural irradiation, valued as both a gemstone and crystal specimen.
crystal
Goshenite Crystal
The pure colorless variety of beryl, valued as crystal specimens and as a brilliant alternative to clearer gemstones.
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.
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.
crystalLemurian Seed Quartz
Clear quartz crystals marked by distinctive horizontal ladder-like striations, popularized from Brazil as a metaphysical stone.
crystal
Geode
A hollow rock nodule whose interior cavity is lined with inward-pointing crystals such as quartz, amethyst, or calcite.
mineral
Brandberg Amethyst
A prized Namibian quartz combining amethyst, smoky, and clear quartz in single crystals, often with phantoms and enhydros.
crystal
Herkimer Diamond
Exceptionally clear, naturally double-terminated quartz crystals from Herkimer County, New York, prized for their diamond-like brilliance.
crystal
Danburite
A glassy calcium borosilicate forming wedge-tipped prismatic crystals, usually colorless to pale yellow or pink, sometimes faceted as a gem.
crystal
Needle Tourmaline
Fine acicular (needle-like) tourmaline crystals, often black schorl, frequently seen as slender inclusions within clear quartz.
mineral
Pegmatite
An exceptionally coarse-grained igneous rock, often granitic, famous for hosting large crystals and many gemstones.
igneous
Kyanite Schist
A mica schist containing bladed blue kyanite crystals, a marker of medium- to high-grade metamorphism of aluminous rocks.
metamorphic
Garden Quartz
Clear quartz filled with mineral inclusions that look like underwater gardens, mossy landscapes, or floating scenery.
crystal
Cactus Quartz
A South African quartz whose central crystal is coated in a cactus-like crust of tiny secondary points, also called spirit quartz.
crystal
Faden Quartz
Tabular quartz crossed by a milky white thread-like line marking where the crystal repeatedly cracked and re-healed.
crystal
Zebra Jasper
A black-and-white striped chalcedony-quartz rock whose bold zebra-like banding makes it a popular ornamental and lapidary stone.
sedimentary
Felsite
A general term for light-colored, fine-grained volcanic rocks rich in quartz and feldspar, like rhyolite.
igneous
Hornblende Schist
A dark, foliated schist rich in needle-like hornblende crystals, formed by metamorphism of mafic igneous rocks.
metamorphic