[Rockhounds] Blue green apophyllite from India

[Rock Currier]

Years ago Dr. George Rossman at Cal Tech determined that the green color of 
apophyllite from a specimen from the quarries at Pashan, near Pune (Poona) 
was colored by vanadium. I would suspect that this is the element 
responsible for the color in Larry's specimens from "Jalgaon", but someone 
would have to do the work on them to confirm that. Also most likely, these 
apophyllite crystals are fluorapophyllite crystals. Some years ago, John 
White of the Smithsonian did an analysis of a number of apophyllite crystals 
from various localities. Of the specimens he studied, only the apophyllites 
that were hydroxyapophyllite were the ones from Khandivili sp? (the runners 
know it as Malad). The other Indian apophyllite crystals were all 
fluorapophyllite. The basalts at Malad are mostly pillow basalts, at least 
those that I saw and because of this (marine environment?) we suspect that 
this may be what caused the apophyllites there to be hydroxyapophyllite 
rather than fluorapophyllites.



The habits of various apophyllite crystals from various quarries in the 
Deccan traps seems to remain consistent for any particular locality. I 
always thought this was interesting because in many quarries, the contents 
of the various pockets could change so much even for pockets that were only 
a few inches away from each other. One pocket could have pink stilbite and a 
foot away could be another with white apophyllite or mostly white drusy 
quartz. All the apophyllite crystals in the various pockets however would 
have more or less the same habit. The similarities could also be somewhat 
regional. The Pune area almost never produces pink stilbite. I have often 
wondered why a locality would produce almost wafer thin apophyllite crystals 
with almost no prism face and others produce rather prismatic pointed ones, 
or like those from one Russian locality with secondary prism faces that make 
them look almost round in cross section.



Rock