FMF - Friends of Minerals Forum, discussion and message board

[zzinVermont]

hello, I am wondering about the crystals in my pics. Are these milky quartzes?

I have posted some videos
on my YouTube channel: zzinVermont

[Kevin Schofield]

Hi zzinVermont,

these are quartz crystals, and geologically-speaking they have epitaxial quartz growing over the prism faces, which is to say that they have tiny quartz crystals growing on the main elongate faces. Other than some iron-staining, they appear to be colourless which in the more opaque crystals appears as white, which some may describe as "milky", which some may call "milky". There is a hint of purple in some, but unclear if that is real or just an effect of the lighting. If it is real, they might be described as "amethystine".

If you wish to dive deeper into quartz morphologies, try this website:

http://www.quartzpage.de
(link normalized by FMF)


Enjoy your crystals!

[Bob Morgan]

The smaller overgrowth crystals are randomly attached to the underlying host crystals. These are probably from the Orange River area of South Africa which have been given other appellations than milky quartz, all of which are just descriptive of the overgrowth habit.