Mineral of the Month 2023

What a beautiful intense color! The mineral of the month March is the crocoite. This mineral is also known under the name “red lead ore” (German: Rotbleierz). This name gives also directly conclusions about the composition, because crocoite is a lead chromate. The color varies between a strong yellow over yellow-orange up to a bright red. Crocoite forms as a rare secondary mineral in the oxidation zone of chromium-bearing lead deposits. The so far best and largest specimens were found in Dundas on Tasmania in Australia. Also this beautiful example shown here, which can be observed in the Museum Mineralogia Munich.

Transparent cubes? This beautiful mineral is halite. Some may also know it by the name sodium chloride or simply salt – more precisely table salt. For our roads on in the winter, if it will be cold again this winter, salts are also used. These are especially potassium salts and are also mined in Germany. Halite crystallizes in the cubic system, which can be seen very nicely in these cubes. Due to mixtures of small amounts of other elements or lattice defects, halite can also have a gray, brownish, yellow to red or bluish color.

This beautiful mineral is adular, collected from the Rhone Glacier in Switzerland. It is found on a metamorphic rock called gneiss. Adular is often found in alpine crevasses. At this piece, the adular has grown with quartz.  Adular is a variety of orthoclase, which is a feldspar. Feldspars belong to one of the most common minerals in our earth crust. Adular is our mineral of the month January.