Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ rocks, minerals, crystals, and gemstones — with properties, formation, colors, hardness, and how to tell them apart.
Sandstone
A clastic sedimentary rock made of cemented sand grains, often quartz, recording ancient beaches, deserts, and rivers.
sedimentaryRed Sandstone
Iron-stained sandstone whose red color comes from hematite coatings, formed in oxidizing desert, river, and coastal environments.
sedimentary
Lithic Sandstone
A sandstone in which the dominant grains are fragments of pre-existing rocks rather than single minerals, signaling rapid erosion nearby.
sedimentary
Feldspathic Sandstone
A feldspar-rich sandstone, often pink, that points to granitic source rocks eroded quickly in dry or cold climates.
sedimentary
Garnet
A group of silicate gemstones best known for deep red but spanning nearly every color, including green tsavorite and orange spessartine.
gemstone
Quartzite Sandstone
A tough, quartz-rich sandstone cemented by silica, transitional toward true quartzite but still sedimentary in origin.
sedimentary
Red Garnet
The classic deep-red garnet — usually almandine or pyrope — long worn as the fiery 'carbuncle' gem and January's birthstone.
gemstoneGrape Garnet
A trademarked deep purple-red rhodolite garnet from India, named for its rich grape-like color from the pyrope-almandine series.
gemstone
Star Garnet
A rare almandine garnet that displays a four- or six-rayed star (asterism) from oriented rutile inclusions; the state gem of Idaho.
gemstone
Honey Garnet
A warm golden-brown garnet named for its honey color, typically a hessonite grossular variety with a distinctive treacly internal texture.
gemstone
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
White Garnet
The rare colorless-to-white grossular garnet, also called leuco garnet, prized by collectors for its purity and unusual lack of color.
gemstone
Peach Garnet
A soft peach to pinkish-orange garnet, usually a malaia-type pyrope-spessartine blend prized for its warm, delicate color.
gemstoneLotus Garnet
A delicate pinkish-purple to peach garnet from Tanzania, a pyrope-spessartine blend named for the soft colors of a lotus flower.
gemstone
Pink Garnet
A trade name for pink garnets, mainly rhodolite, a rose-to-purplish pyrope-almandine blend prized for its bright clean color.
gemstoneMint Garnet
A delicate pastel-green grossular garnet, lighter than tsavorite, most famously from the Merelani Hills of Tanzania.
gemstone
Green Garnet
An umbrella term for green members of the garnet group, including prized tsavorite, demantoid, and rare chrome-rich uvarovite.
gemstone
Mali Garnet
A rare grossular-andradite blend ('grandite') from Mali, prized for its high brilliance and golden-green to yellow color.
gemstoneSyrian Garnet
Syrian Garnet is an old trade name for fine deep-red almandine, historically tied to the Syriam region and prized as 'precious garnet.'
gemstone
Pyrope Garnet
The magnesium-rich garnet famed for its intense blood-red 'fire,' historically the Bohemian garnet of Victorian jewelry.
gemstoneMalaia Garnet
A pyrope-spessartine garnet in warm peach, salmon, and pinkish-orange tones, originally rejected by dealers and named 'malaia,' Swahili for outcast.
gemstone
Dragon Garnet
A trade name for deep wine-red garnet, typically a rich pyrope-almandine stone marketed for its dramatic, fiery color.
gemstone
Yellow Garnet
A trade term for yellow garnets, including golden grossular, yellow andradite (topazolite), and yellow-green Mali garnet.
gemstoneLeuco Garnet
The rare colorless variety of grossular garnet, a near-flawless transparent gem free of the iron and chromium that color most garnets.
gemstone