Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia

Search and identify 1,000+ rocks, minerals, crystals, and gemstones — with properties, formation, colors, hardness, and how to tell them apart.

Smoky Quartz

The smoky brown to gray variety of quartz, colored by natural irradiation, valued as both a gemstone and crystal specimen.

The darkest, near-opaque black variety of smoky quartz, colored by natural radiation acting on trace aluminum.

Quartz with a wider crystal 'cap' that grew over a narrower stem, forming a natural scepter or mushroom shape.

A quartz with a complex skeletal, layered surface of many terminations and etched recesses, also called skeletal or jacare quartz.

The soft pink, usually cloudy variety of quartz colored by trace titanium or microscopic inclusions, popular for carvings and beads.

Clear or smoky quartz threaded with golden to reddish needles of rutile, also poetically called Venus hair stone.

A prized Namibian quartz combining amethyst, smoky, and clear quartz in single crystals, often with phantoms and enhydros.

A trade name for quartz containing a combination of seven minerals including amethyst, smoky quartz, and cacoxenite, prized by collectors.

An altered granite of pink feldspar, green epidote and quartz, mottled pink-and-green and popular as a tumbled and carving stone.

A deep black variety of banded chalcedony, often closely related to or treated like onyx, used for jewelry and carvings.

An opaque, often colorfully patterned variety of chalcedony quartz, popular for tumbling, carving, and jewelry.

An opaque green variety of chalcedony quartz colored by iron and chlorite-group inclusions, prized as a durable carving and cabochon stone.