Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ rocks, minerals, crystals, and gemstones — with properties, formation, colors, hardness, and how to tell them apart.
Orange Calcite
A soft, glowing orange variety of calcite colored by iron oxides, popular as tumbled stones and known for fizzing in acid.
mineral
Green Calcite
A soft mint-to-apple-green variety of calcite, a common calcium carbonate mineral popular as soothing tumbled stones.
mineral
Blue Calcite
A soft, soothing powder-blue variety of calcite, a common calcium carbonate mineral often sold as gentle tumbled stones.
mineral
Geode
A hollow rock nodule whose interior cavity is lined with inward-pointing crystals such as quartz, amethyst, or calcite.
mineral
Dumortierite
A hard aluminum borosilicate famous for its rich denim-blue color, often forming dense fibrous masses or coloring quartz blue.
mineral
Mariposite
A green, gold-associated metamorphic rock made of chrome-rich mica and quartz, named for Mariposa County in California's gold country.
metamorphic
Red Jasper
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.
gemstoneWoodbine Jasper
An earthy-toned jasper with vine-like or scenic patterning, valued by lapidaries for warm browns, reds, and creams that polish to a smooth finish.
gemstoneRainforest Jasper
An Australian green rhyolite with eye-like orbs and earthy patterns marketed as jasper, evoking dense rainforest foliage.
igneous
Mustard Jasper
A warm mustard-to-ochre yellow jasper colored by iron, valued by lapidaries for its rich, earthy golden tone.
gemstone
Rose Quartz
The soft pink, usually cloudy variety of quartz colored by trace titanium or microscopic inclusions, popular for carvings and beads.
crystal
Garden Quartz
Clear quartz filled with mineral inclusions that look like underwater gardens, mossy landscapes, or floating scenery.
crystal
Bumblebee Jasper
A vivid yellow-and-black banded stone from Indonesian volcanic vents, colored by sulfur, arsenic minerals and iron oxides, not true jasper.
sedimentary
Dumortierite Quartz
Quartz colored blue by inclusions of the mineral dumortierite, giving a denim-like blue ornamental stone harder than dumortierite alone.
gemstone
Rutilated Quartz
Clear or smoky quartz threaded with golden to reddish needles of rutile, also poetically called Venus hair stone.
crystal
Quartzite Sandstone
A tough, quartz-rich sandstone cemented by silica, transitional toward true quartzite but still sedimentary in origin.
sedimentaryOnyx Marble
Translucent banded calcium-carbonate stone deposited in caves and springs, prized for ornamental carvings despite its softness.
sedimentary
Marble
A metamorphosed limestone of interlocking calcite crystals, prized for sculpture and architecture for its workability and polish.
metamorphic
Lapis Lazuli
An intensely blue metamorphic rock of lazurite flecked with golden pyrite, prized for millennia as a gemstone and ultramarine pigment.
metamorphic
Septarian Concretion
A rounded sedimentary nodule cracked internally and filled with veins of yellow calcite, prized for its striking dragon-skin patterning.
sedimentary
Desert Rose
A rosette-shaped cluster of bladed gypsum or barite crystals that traps sand, forming flower-like formations in arid deserts.
mineral
Oolitic Limestone
Limestone built from tiny rounded ooid grains resembling fish roe, formed in warm, agitated shallow seas.
sedimentaryPicasso Jasper
A marbled, abstractly patterned stone resembling modern art, technically a metamorphosed limestone rather than a true silica jasper.
metamorphicLithographic Limestone
Extremely fine-grained, even-textured limestone famous for lithographic printing and for preserving exquisite fossils like Archaeopteryx.
sedimentary