Catalog Search Guide

You can search our catalog using different mineral attributes. For example, you can search by color such as green, yellow or purple, or by chemical elements such as uranium, calcium or iron, or by mineral groups such as phosphate, silicate or carbonate. You can also filter by crystal habit like crystal, geode or crystal on matrix, by specimen size such as thumbnail, small, medium or cabinet, and by features such as radioactive or fluorescent minerals.

Epidote

Epidote is a calcium-aluminum-iron sorosilicate and the namesake of the epidote group, closely related to clinozoisite, zoisite, allanite, and piemontite. Its signature pistachio-green to olive color, strong pleochroism, and deeply striated monoclinic prisms make it one of the most recognizable specimen minerals, formed typically in metamorphic rocks, skarns, and alpine-cleft environments where hydrothermal fluids alter calcium-rich precursors.

The undisputed reference locality is Knappenwand in the Untersulzbachtal, Salzburg, Austria, discovered in 1865 and still ranked as the source of the finest gemmy, lustrous epidote crystals in the world. Other classic and historically important localities include Prince of Wales Island and Green Monster Mountain in Alaska, Baja California's copper skarns in Mexico, the alpine fissures of Zermatt in Switzerland, and the celebrated Pakistani finds from Alchuri and Skardu in the Karakoram, prized for their gemmy dark-green terminated crystals often associated with quartz and actinolite.

Collectors seek epidote for its combination of vivid color, sharp crystal habit, and geological significance as an index mineral of greenschist and amphibolite-facies metamorphism. Fine thumbnail to cabinet specimens from Knappenwand and Alchuri remain benchmark pieces in any systematic silicate or alpine-cleft mineral collection.