Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ rocks, minerals, crystals, and gemstones — with properties, formation, colors, hardness, and how to tell them apart.
Lindi Garnet
Lindi Garnet is a rare vanadium-rich color-change garnet from Tanzania's Lindi region, shifting from blue-green daylight tones to purple-red.
gemstone
Hydrogrossular Garnet
A water-bearing massive grossular garnet, usually green or pink, widely used as a tough jade-like carving stone.
gemstone
Garnet Schist
A shiny, foliated schist studded with red garnet crystals that grew during medium-grade regional metamorphism.
metamorphicMint Garnet
A delicate pastel-green grossular garnet, lighter than tsavorite, most famously from the Merelani Hills of Tanzania.
gemstone
Bohemian Garnet
Small, intensely red chrome-pyrope garnets from the Czech Bohemian region, famous for densely set antique Victorian jewelry.
gemstone
Melanite Garnet
The titanium-rich black variety of andradite garnet, with a brilliant resinous luster prized for mourning and statement jewelry.
gemstone
Black Garnet
An opaque black garnet — typically titanium-bearing melanite andradite — historically cut for mourning and Victorian jewelry.
gemstone
Aquamarine Matrix
Aquamarine crystals still attached to their natural host rock, prized as mineral specimens showing beryl in its original pocket setting.
mineralGrandite Garnet
Grandite is an intermediate garnet between grossular and andradite, common in skarns and prized for vivid green to golden crystals.
mineral
Uvarovite Garnet
The rare calcium-chromium garnet, famous for its sparkling emerald-green druzy crusts of tiny crystals, the only consistently green garnet.
mineral
Color Change Garnet
A rare garnet that dramatically shifts color from greenish in daylight to reddish under lamplight, rivaling alexandrite.
gemstone
Merelani Mint Garnet
A delicate vanadium-colored mint-green grossular garnet from the Merelani Hills of Tanzania, the source of tanzanite.
gemstone
Emerald in Matrix
Natural emerald crystals still embedded in their host rock, prized as mineral specimens that show how the gem grew in place.
gemstone
Yttrium Aluminum Garnet
A synthetic garnet-structured oxide (YAG) used as a diamond simulant and laser crystal, with no natural counterpart.
gemstone
Ant Hill Garnet
Small, bright chrome-pyrope garnets famously brought to the surface by harvester ants on the Navajo lands of Arizona.
gemstoneMasasi Blue Garnet
Masasi Blue Garnet is a rare vanadium-bearing color-change garnet from Tanzania that appears blue-green by day and purplish-red indoors.
gemstone
Calc-Silicate Rock
A metamorphic rock of calcium-rich silicate minerals formed from impure limestone or dolomite altered by heat and fluids.
metamorphicChrome Spessartine
Chrome Spessartine is a rare chromium-bearing manganese garnet whose trace chromium intensifies its already vivid orange color.
gemstoneGondite
A metamorphic rock made chiefly of manganese-rich spessartine garnet and quartz, formed from ancient manganese-bearing sediments.
metamorphic
Eclogite
A dense, high-pressure metamorphic rock famous for its red garnets set in bright green pyroxene, formed deep within subduction zones.
metamorphic
Chrome Pyrope
A chromium-rich pyrope garnet whose intense blood-red color comes from chromium, often mined from ant hills and kimberlite weathering.
gemstone
Khondalite
A high-grade metamorphic gneiss of garnet, sillimanite, quartz, and graphite, derived from ancient aluminous sediments.
metamorphic
Kimzeyite
A rare zirconium-bearing garnet that crystallizes in carbonatites and alkaline rocks, first described from Magnet Cove, Arkansas.
mineralEltyubyuite
A rare chlorine-bearing iron garnet-supergroup mineral, the ferric analogue of wadalite, formed in high-temperature combustion-metamorphic rocks.
mineral