• A piece of rough red leopardskin jasper with colorful red and white veining. Elsewhere there is a gray and dark gray orbicular pattern against a light tan rock background.
  • Another side of the piece, where the spotted red and white veining pattern continues. The orbicular pattern has some yellow to it on this side.
  • Another side of the piece, with continued red and white spotted veining accompanied by red veining bordered with dark gray.
  • Detail of the red and white spotted veining, which has a round and radial growth pattern and appears composed of spherulites. Towards the bottom of the parallel lines the colors become darker. One line vein running diagonal through it all has a linear streaking pattern.
  • A view looking down a point of the rock, showing the stripes ring the piece, and there are alternating bands or colorful veins, gray spherulites, and light background rock.
  • Captioned "wet," the piece while wet showing more vibrant red color and light red tinted background color. While wet the material has sharper color contrasts.
  • Captioned "wet," a detail view of the piece while wet showing multicolored spherulites and veins composed of spherulites. The radial growth pattern is apparent.
  • Captioned "wet," an end of the piece while wet. The end is covered in squiggling veins of bright red, muted red, white and dark brownish gray.
  • Captioned "wet," a detail view of the piece while wet emphasizing the parallel bands of red and white spherulitic growth. The color is very strong and the side displays great radial growth patterns.
  • Scale image of the piece of leopardskin on a measuring mat, showing it is a bit over two and a half inches square
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Red leopardskin jasper

Red leopardskin jasper

$10.00 USD
$10.00 USD
Sale Sold out
Shipping calculated at checkout.

Locale: Mexico

Approx dimensions: 2.5 x 2.5 x 2"

Approx weight: 385g

 

Leopardskin jasper is in fact not a true jasper, but a variety of rhyolite. A lot of jaspers are actually rhyolite! Mineralogically jasper is a variety of chalcedony, which is a form of quartz. Rhyolite is in the family tree, an igneous rock composed of quartz and feldspar.

Leopardskin provides a textbook example of orbicular growth: round 'orb-' or eyeball-like patterns in minerals, often showing multiple rings of color. Alternatively these are called orbicular spherulites; spherulites are minerals composed of dense radial needle-like growth from a point to create a sphere (hence "spher"ulite). Spherulites are typically crystalized feldspar forming within volcanic igneous quartz-based rock. They commonly appear as distinct circles with rings of color as in the case of leopardskin jasper.

This piece has bold parallel red and white stripes with additional veining zig-zagging the surface. Studied closely, the stripes are composed of radial spherulite patterns.

Add the rough piece to your collection, drier terrariums, or use as an accent in a succulent bowl. Chunks of rough like this are commonly sold for lapidary purposes, to be polished into tumbles, slabs, carvings, or jewelry. The rough material is already quite beautiful, but colors deepen if polished; images labeled 'wet' preview what to expect if you do wish to polish.

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