[Rockhounds] Blue green apophyllite from India

[J Bryan Kramer]

Darn, now you made me want one of those. It just seems that it would be cool
to have a crystal from the Deccan Traps.

BK

On 10/22/07, Rock Currier <rockcurrier at cs.com> wrote:
>
> 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
>
>
>
>
>
>
> --
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-- 
J Bryan Kramer
North Florida, USA
photos at:
http://pbase.com/photoburner


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