A garnet /ˈɡɑːrnət/ is one kind of silicate mineral. There are many different kinds of garnets, containing different metals. Crystals of garnet are often large and pretty. Their most common color is red or purple, but they can be found in almost all colors and are often used in jewelry. In the United States, garnet is the birthstone for people born in the month of January.
Garnet
Etymology and history
The term garnet was first coined in the Middle Ages, but has its origins in the Latin word granum for grain or kernel or granatus for granular or rich in kernels and refers on the one hand to the occurrence of the mineral in grains, which have similarities with the kernels of the pomegranate (Punica granatum), but on the other hand also to the orange-red to red-violet colour of the blossom, fruit and kernels of the pomegranate.
Garnets were already used as gemstones in ancient times. In the Middle Ages, together with rubies and spinels, they were known as carbuncle (also known as carbuncle stone) - most of them came from India at that time. Under the horn of the mythical creature unicorn, a carbuncle stone growing there was believed to be able to heal all wounds. But they were particularly popular in the 19th century, when Bohemian pyrope were so sought after that they were shipped as far as America.
Modifications and varieties
- Achtaragdite (also Achtarandite, English Akhtaragdite): Pseudomorph of Grossular-Katoite-mixed crystals (Hydrogrossular) after mineral of the Mayenit-Obergruppe, possibly also from Hibschit after Wadalit of the Wiljui in Russia. Achtaragdite is usually found in the form of tetrahedral or triakistetrahedral crystals of white-gray to gray-brown color.
- Bredbergite (after James Dwight Dana, around 1900): Obsolete and no longer common name for a magnesium-rich andradite variety.
- Demantoid (after Nils von Nordenskiöld, c. 1870): Andradite variety coloured yellow-green by foreign admixtures.
- Melanite (after Abraham Gottlob Werner, 1799): Considered a titanium-rich variety of andradite and named after the Greek word μέλας for black, as it occurs predominantly in gray-black to pitch-black crystals or coarse aggregates.
- Topazolite (after P. C. Bonvoisin, 1806): Light yellow, "topaz-like" andradite variety, first discovered in the Valle di Lanza in the Italian region of Piedmont.
- Xalostocite: Name for a dense intergrowth of translucent pink grossulars with white marble, named after the locality of Xalostoc in the Mexican state of Morelos.
