Questions And Answers On Home Gardening In Oklahoma
Mike asks…
rocks & minerals mixed with quartz?
Here’s a geology question.
I found a rock roughly the size of a cantaloupe melon in the rock garden at my home in Oklahoma. It looks like a big piece of of opaque quartz. There appear to be a couple of other minerals, or metal combined with the quartz. I’m wondering what the other two items might be. One looks like a type of rock, it’s a pinkish color that has some dark lines marbled through it. The second looks like it might be a silver metal. It’s hard to tell for sure, it’s very shiny and might just be some crystal clear quartz that broke of so smooth that it’s very reflective.
Any of you geology fans out there know what I might be looking at in this chunk?
Thanks!
Home Gardener answers:
It might to have a photo to identify the other minerals.
But there are a number of other minerals that could occur with quartz, particularly since it’s one of the later minerals to crystalize from magma. Any impurieties can be included in the quartz itself, or may just tint the quartz a different color.
The pink might just be rose quartz or a feldspar. The silver metallic mineral might be inclusions of rutile if it’s rod-shaped, or it may be an internal fracture that catches and reflects/refracts the light differently than the rest of the quartz.
Best to post a photo (and maybe put this question in the Geology section instead of Botany).
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