Most specimens of strawberry quartz consist of single quartz crystals with included red minerals.
Strawberry Quartz Crystal: This collector-grade specimen perfectly fits the definition of “strawberry quartz”. It is a terminated quartz crystal that is packed with tiny acicular crystals of reflective red hematite. Although the red hematite crystals account for a small volume of the specimen, they fill the quartz crystal with a wonderful red color and give it an aventurescent reflectance. This specimen was collected near Chihuahua, Mexico and measures about 5.7 x 5.5 x 4 centimeters in size.
However, some specimens consist of granular quartz in the form of quartzite with inclusions of lepidolite or alurgite mica.
Quartzite is a metamorphic rock that forms when a sandstone is subjected to heat and pressure. This type of strawberry quartz is often aventurescent because during metamorphism the mica grains in the rock are orientiented with their reflective surfaces perpendicular to the direction of metamorphic compression.
That enables them to produce the simultaneous reflections known as aventurescene. These specimens are often marketed as “pink aventurine” or “strawberry aventurine”
Strawberry Aventurine: This tumbled stone is made up of quartzite that obtains its pink color from tiny flakes of pink mica (lepidolite). The flakes of pink mica are in a subparallel alignment that enables them to simultaneously reflect incident light. These simultaneous reflections produce a property known as aventurescence, and thus the name “strawberry aventurine”.
Aventurine occurs in many different colors and aventurescence is displayed by many different gem minerals.
