Quartz with growth slip

Item Description

At first glance this may simply look like another quartz cluster, beautiful though it is. However it tells a story! The environment when and where these formed was apparently not an easy one, and the growing crystals in some cases seem to have formed, broken off their original emplacements, and fallen lower in the pocket to be "frozen" into a new cluster of already grown crystals, while hot fluids were still present. Thus, the older crystal anneals to the new placement, bonded molecularly by connecting quartz that came out of solution to join the larger crystals as the fluids cooled down, producing what is often called a “slip and reheal” point. Here, it sits in really obvious view at the front of a cluster of other crystals, on green chlorite. The joined crystal in the middle is 9 cm, and doubly terminated! Highly unusual example of this pocket growth process in display condition - displayable for beauty, we mean; rather than simply as a geological reference specimen.