Mila'sExotic Plants & CuriositiesA living collection by Luminary OdditiesThe mineral atlas
Explore gem mineral families, their color varieties, and their natural and laboratory-created counterparts. Moissanite receives its own guide, with retail origin kept distinct from its rare natural occurrence.
14 specimens · Geology, history, and attributed traditions
Sea blue columns
Blue to blue-green beryl.
Aquamarine is blue-to-blue-green beryl. Pale transparent prisms retain an architectural hexagonal form; an opaque matrix piece can look quite different from a finished gem. Sea-colored imagery describes its appearance rather than its place of formation.
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The green beryl chamber
Green beryl in the gemological emerald range.
Emerald is the green gem variety of beryl. Visible inclusions and fractures can be part of its geological record, while matrix retains relationships lost in a faceted stone. Not every pale green beryl is automatically identified as emerald.
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Blush beryl
Pink to orange-pink beryl.
Morganite is pink-to-peach beryl, often pale enough that a larger mass displays its color more strongly. A transparent gem and a rough architectural crystal show different aspects of the same mineral framework. It is neither rose quartz nor pink glass.
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The beryl family
Beryl family material outside the dedicated aquamarine, emerald and morganite pages.
The extended beryl family connects colorless goshenite, golden heliodor and green beryl with better-known aquamarine, emerald and morganite. These gem names usually sort color appearances within one mineral species. The comparison reveals how shared structure can support different visual identities.
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A paired spodumene story
Colored varieties of spodumene.
Kunzite and hiddenite are gem varieties of spodumene. Pink-to-violet kunzite and green hiddenite share elongated crystal forms and a lithium-bearing pyroxene framework. The paired names do not mean their color causes or spiritual associations are identical.
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Blue blades
Aluminium silicate mineral, polymorphous with andalusite and sillimanite.
Kyanite is an aluminium silicate frequently recognized by long blue blades. Fans, intergrown blades and dark aggregates express habit rather than a new mineral species. Color varies, so blue is characteristic but not a complete identification.
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The turning violet
Gem-quality cordierite, often violet-blue and strongly pleochroic.
Iolite is gem-quality cordierite, often violet-blue with strongly different colors in different viewing directions. This property is pleochroism. The changing hue is not the same phenomenon as a rainbow flash produced by layered feldspar.
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A cross section
Andalusite; chiastolite is the cross-patterned inclusion variety.
Andalusite is an aluminium silicate; chiastolite is its inclusion-patterned variety with a dark cross visible in a cut section. The internal cross is different from two whole crystals intersecting as a staurolite twin.
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Soft green clusters
Calcium aluminium silicate, often pale green and botryoidal.
Prehnite is a calcium aluminium silicate, often pale green with rounded or botryoidal surfaces. A polished mass can appear softly cloudy; dark associated crystals add a very different texture. Rounded habit does not identify every component inside a piece.
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Pistachio prisms
Calcium aluminium iron silicate in the epidote group.
Epidote is a calcium aluminium iron silicate often recognized by pistachio-green prisms. It also occurs as a component of mixed rocks. Naming epidote in a piece does not make every part of the host the same mineral.
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One family many colors
Zoisite mineral; tanzanite is blue-violet gem zoisite.
Zoisite is a calcium aluminium silicate with several familiar gem appearances. Blue-violet tanzanite, pink thulite and green ruby-bearing material belong in comparison, but a mixed rock is not one uniformly colored zoisite crystal.
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The corundum pair
Red and other colored gem varieties of corundum.
Ruby and sapphire are gem varieties of corundum, aluminium oxide. Ruby is red; other gem colors fall under sapphire. A matrix specimen, a transparent cut gem and an opaque star cabochon reveal different appearances of this shared mineral.
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A clear termination
Aluminium fluorine/hydroxyl silicate mineral.
Topaz is an aluminium silicate containing fluorine and hydroxyl, with colors extending beyond familiar commercial blue. Clear prisms and striated faces provide a more accurate rough silhouette than treating every specimen as a blue gem.
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Fire in silicon carbide
Silicon carbide (SiC); rare natural mineral, with laboratory-created material supplying the gem trade.
Moissanite deserves its own entry because its natural mineral identity and ordinary retail origin are easy to confuse.
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