FMF - Friends of Minerals Forum, discussion and message board

[Carles Millan]

[Don Lum]

Quartz and Tourmaline

[Mark Ost]

[Carles Millan]

[Don Lum]

Gypsum

[Don Lum]

Gypsum

[Don Lum]

I am posting two recent acquisitions from a new find. The first is a quartz crystal that is host to an intergrown grouping of complex crystals of multicolored fluorite. The fluorite crystals are violet with a distinct red phantom. The fluorite has interesting face modifications of the octahedron. I believe that some collectors refer to this as "stepped growth." At the corners are cubic crystals with dodecahedral face modifications. I am posting the following pictures to illustrate both the interesting stepped growth and the violet and red colors.

[Don Lum]

This is the second of two recent acquisitions from a new find. This quartz crystal is host to several complex crystals of violet colored fluorite. The fluorite has interesting face modifications of the octahedron. I believe that some collectors refer to this as "stepped growth." At the corners are cubic crystals with dodecahedral face modifications. I am posting the following pictures to illustrate both the interesting stepped growth and the violet color.

[Don Lum]

Some minerals in my collection from Mexico

[Don Lum]

Smoky Quartz

[Don Lum]

Arkansas Wavellite

[Don Lum]

Arkansas Wavellite

[Don Lum]

This specimen is from the first find of Blue Wavellite in the State of Arkansas (personal communication with Mike Howard),

[Don Lum]

Blue Arkansas Wavellite

[Don Lum]

This is a specimen of black Arkansas wavellite that I posted previously but this time with better photographs.

The following is a quote from rockhoundingAR copyright 2011 by J. Michael Howard and I use it with his permission:

Some of the Saline County yellow wavellite is very fluorescent, a nice apple-green color, as a very thin coating of the last mineral deposited. A location in Polk County yielded crystal coatings of yellow microcrystals in a milky quartz matrix. White wavellite, due to the absence of vanadium, is known from several locations including: the Montgomery County quarry, where it is often gradationally intergrown with various shades of green wavellite; the Wilson Springs vanadium mine where it formed as small colorless to white crystalline spheres on limonitic matrix; from one of the novaculite quarries at Hot Springs as thin colorless to white radiating films on black novaculite; and at the Christy vanadium mine east of Magnet Cove in Hot Spring County where I recovered a couple of specimens on dark gray novaculite matrix. A recent find of wavellite from the Montgomery County quarry also turned up some blue-green (almost turquoise colored) wavellite. By far the rarest color is black. Until recently, I was under the impression that black wavellite was simply colored by inclusions of dark clay, but I discovered on a bargain table at one of the local rockshops at Hot Springs several pieces that had distinctive black botryoidal crusts and a nice crystalline luster. The color is solid and uniform across a 2 mm layer in one pocket and several other pieces have half a sphere bright green and the other half black. This material also recently came from the Montgomery County quarry.

Mike told me recently that the color in the black wavellite is due to the presence of shale particles.