Strawberry Quartz

The photo shows two polished oval stones in pink, with thin reddish orange lines and specks inside. According to Geology.com, "strawberry quartz" is really a marketing name, not a mineral name: it is used for pink to red quartz that gets its color from eye-visible inclusions of other minerals. The inclusions can be platelets of hematite, flakes of lepidolite, a reddish orange mica called alurgite, and more. And why strawberry? According to the site, because those specks look like the seeds on a strawberry.

Strawberry quartz is not rose quartz, even though they look like relatives. According to Geology.com, the color of rose quartz probably comes from trace amounts of titanium, iron or manganese, or from very fine fibers of a pink mineral called dumortierite. In strawberry quartz, by contrast, the color comes from light reflecting off visible particles. So in rose quartz the color is built in, and in strawberry quartz it is scattered through the stone like seeds.

Now for the warning. According to Geology.com, nature does not provide enough fine strawberry quartz to meet demand, so the most common imitation is melted glass mixed with particles of hematite or another red material. A good imitation can be very convincing, but sometimes you can see tiny gas bubbles trapped in the glass. According to Crystal Almanac, the market is "flooded with imitations": dyed quartz, red glass, and even "cherry quartz" that is really glass.

Geology.com adds a nice distinction: an imitation is not necessarily a fake. Glass sold as "imitation strawberry quartz" is a perfectly legal product. It only becomes a fake when the seller does not tell you. We have not tested the stones in the photo in a lab. Their color is uneven, and the inclusions look like natural lines and specks, but without testing there is no way to be sure.

And to finish, a little humor from Geology.com: strawberry quartz is a relatively inexpensive stone, so it is set in sterling silver or 10 karat gold. The site writes that it is "waiting" for the jeweler Le Vian to set it in its trademarked "strawberry gold". Until then, the strawberries go without cream.