[Rockhounds] Blue green apophyllite from India

[Lawrence Rush]

Rock: In a new message from my Indian friend, he states that these specimens 
are from a village near Arendol in Jalgaon Dist. In Maharashtra, and are 
recent. The Pashan and the Khandavali mines closed in 1989 and 2002, 
respectively, so they definitely did not come from there. He tells me that 
Indian dealers still like to put those two localities as their specimen 
origin in order to get a premium price for them.

This fellow has been very honest and forthright with me in many dealings, 
and he says that he has never seen this aquamarine color before, and 
believes it to be a new occurrence.

>From what limited exposure I have had of pillow basalts and their 
mineralization, I would agree with you that this is a distinct possibility 
for origin.

If anyone wants a chip of one of these for analysis, let me know. It may be 
an opportunity to scientifically document this. I am already thinking of a 
new species name, something like

LawrenceRockKreighRichardsite     :')

Many thanks to you, Rock, and to Pete, Kreigh, and Kitty for allowing this 
conversation to continue with your excellent comments!

Larry Rush
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----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Rock Currier" <rockcurrier at cs.com>
To: <rockhounds at lists.drizzle.com>
Sent: Monday, October 22, 2007 2:15 PM
Subject: [Rockhounds] Blue green apophyllite from India


> 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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