I had to take the pictures from behind a glass pane so excuse the lack of extreme close ups.
Take a stab at identifying the minerals and post your answers in the comments. I will put up the correct answers in this post in a few days.
Update: Answers at the bottom.
A)
B)
C)
These palm sized samples were selling in the range of Rs 5000 to Rs 10,000 (~ $100 to $200). Larger samples were in the range of Rs 25,000 to Rs 60,000. These are prices for the Indian market. I imagine there will be a significant markup for sale in the U.S and Europe, Japan etc.
Ornamental zeolites have become quite a lucrative business.
Answers: Lockwood got most of them right!
A) pink - stilbite, green - apophyllite, needles - scolecite , few crystals of heulandite in the centre of the sample.
B) blue- cavansite , white substrate - stilbite
C) cotton like puffs- okenite, small globules - gyrolite , prismatic crystals- apophyllite, with substrate of quartz.
A: At the top, I think I'm seeing some sheaves of stilbite (creamy-pinkish), and some prisms of apophyllite (vitreous & colorless). I don't recognize the acicular mineral- it doesn't look right for natrolite-mesolite. Lower right might be a rhomb of calcite, and low middle (hard to say here w/out 3-D perspective) could be a typical "coffin-shaped" tab of heulandite.
ReplyDeleteB: The only thing I recognize is a single tab of stilbite near the middle, which has caught the reflection of flash, and is outlined nicely.
C: Fibrous clusters look like natrolite-mesolite, but the smaller "not hairy" sphereoids might be something else. There's a gorgeous prism of apophyllite near the middle of image and some smaller ones scattered around. I can't tell what the small crystals lining the vug are, but maybe quartz?
We have a LOT of zeolites in western Oregon too- it's probably the mineral group I know best. But in defense of the ones I got wrong, it is hard to tell from photos.