• A portion of a geode with a thin crust in indirect sunlight. The interior is lined with stalactitic forms of orange chalcedony covered with a milky white agate swirls.
  • Detail of the white radial quartz growth, which has a bit of a rim like a UFO. In the foreground the broken edge shows layers of growth with a dark metallic point at the center ringed by orange and white.
  • Looking down at the spires in the geode, most are broken except a few bulbous ones up against the geode wall.
  • Focusing on the right side of the specimen, there is a large spherical opaque white quartz form near the top of the piece.
  • The back of the specimen, with the geode crust a rough brown rock. A crack is visible horizontally across the piece, and dark dirt-like material used to cover it and a vertical crack.
  • Full view of the geode piece in full sun, showing a crack horizontally through the center with brown mud-like material used to hide a repair. The white quartz surface glitters like snow.
  • A side-view of the piece showing swirling white agate patterns on the surface of the spires.
  • Detail of interesting agate patterns on the surface of the spires, forming white spheres and a honeycomb-like pattern. The repair is visible in the crack below the spires, which has white glue with bubbles visible in it, partially covered in a brown silty dirt.
  • Close view looking straight down on the spires, with many hollowed out at the top leaving a thin raised ring.
  • Detail of broken spires along the top of the piece, with a radial metallic mineral in the top of one.
  • Detail of broken spires, showing a dark point at the center with a wide ring of orange and then white translucent growth.
  • Scale image of the specimen on a measuring mat, measuring about three inches across and about two and a half tall.
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Stalactitic chalcedony geode piece (repaired)

Stalactitic chalcedony geode piece (repaired)

$40.00 USD
$46.00 USD $40.00 USD
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Locale: Atlas Mountains, Morocco

Approx dimensions: 3 x 2.5 x 1.5"

Approx weight: 178g

**Repaired specimen

 

These unusual geodes from Morocco are like small caves lined with stalactites, botryoidal forms, and swirling agate patterns. While commonly called red chalcedony, I find the color is more orange to red-orange. Hematite causes this coloration, but later phases of growth (“second generation”) don’t contain hematite inclusions. This creates a colorless-to-white growth over the orange chalcedony, which can produce a soft orange-cream druzy coating, or bold Halloween patterns of orange and white stripey stalactites.

This piece of a geode has fat, rounded stalactites with sugary fibrous parallel-growth quartz coating the surface. Spheres of white quartz sprinkle the surface, and there is a large amorphous blob of white radial-growth quartz in the upper right corner. Since chalcedony and quartz are closely related you often see them grow together. They have the same chemical composition (silica) but different crystal structure (cryptocrystalline vs. crystalline).

Where stalactites have broken you can see a pinpoint of a dark, metallic, mineral at the core, surrounded by orange chalcedony, then translucent white chalcedony. The broken ends of stalactites reveal a curiosity: some are hollow, apparently dissolved away. Another is tipped with metallic radial growth.

This specimen has been inexpertly repaired from at least three pieces. The pieces were not reset evenly so cracks may be offset or have wide gaps in places. Dirt was used to "hide" visible glue in the crack near the center of the specimen (you can see the impressions where bubbles have burst from the glue in picture 8). 

 

Repaired: This specimen has been repaired, meaning it broke but someone recompiled and glued it back together. These Moroccan geodes are frequently recompiled and glued together—but this is infrequently disclosed :( Read more about how to detect repairs.

I don't know how often breaks occur due to rough techniques in mining or cracking the geodes open, but I suspect many of the breaks are natural based on how few intact pieces I have ever seen. I have observed many of these geodes have a fairly thin, brittle crust which may make them susceptible to fracturing as part of normal geological processes. I have also seen examples where it appeared iron staining had leaked through the breaks, indicating the cracks occurred well before the specimen was mined.

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