• A piece of rough yellow leopardskin jasper with a light tan rock background spotted with orbicular patterns, yellow ringed by a green-tinted color or deeper golden yellow, and some with dark gray. There are several bold yellow veins across it bordered with dark gray.
  • Another side of the piece, spotted with well-formed orbicular pattern and several veins of yellow color.
  • Another angle of the piece showing one side is a layer of golden yellow material with a rough surface rippled like sand. The other face has excellent orbicular pattern that turns into spotted lines then veins of yellow color before the yellow layer side.
  • Captioned "wet," a view of a side of the piece wet with the yellow layer at the base. The orbicular pattern is bolder than dry, with good color and clean pattern
  • Captioned "wet," a wet view of the side with orbicular pattern blending into veins. The veins are composed of spherulites, with elongated ones in the blending zone.
  • Captioned "wet," a closer view of a side with two colors of orbicular pattern. The background is a warm tan color with light gray surrounding the spherulites. On the right side the pattern has rings of yellow, green-gray, and dark gray. On the left, the rings have subtler tones of yellow to mustard gray.
  • Captioned "wet," a detail image of the uneven rock surface on the wet piece of leopardskin jasper. Radial growth patterns are visible.
  • Captioned "wet," detail image of the surface of the piece wet. Excellent radial growth patterns are visible in the orbicular patterns, in the veins, and even the background.
  • Scale image of the piece of leopardskin on a measuring mat, showing it is nearly three and a half by 3 inches long
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Yellow leopardskin jasper

Yellow leopardskin jasper

$12.00 USD
$12.00 USD
Sale Sold out
Shipping calculated at checkout.

Locale: Mexico

Approx dimensions: 3.5 x 2.5 x 2.25"

Approx weight: 410g

 

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 gorgeous bold orbicular patterns intersected with yellow banding. Studied closely, the veins are composed of spherulites. A golden yellow band of color is exposed, taking up one side of the piece.

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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