Detailed information
Species
Grossular
Dimensions
18 x 20 x 18
mm
Weight
8 g
Locality
Vilyui River Basin (Wilui River Basin) Sakha Republic (Yakutia) Eastern-Siberia, Russia
Condition
No recorded repairs
Grossular, a calcium aluminium garnet, has its Type Locality at the Vilyui River Basin (Wilui River Basin) in Eastern-Siberia, Russia. I must confess that I had no idea of this and had just assumed that, like some early-discovered garnet species, that its Type Locality was lost in the annals of time. This individual thumbnail-sized crystal from that locality is a floater - complete all round. Its colour, is dappled between classic gooseberry green (from whence the name comes) and grey-white, these whiter patches making it harder to see the crystal faces, but they are all there - a classic trapezohedron. It certainly cannot complete with the gemminess or complex crystallographic form of Grossular from Jeffrey mine, but at 2 cm across, and showing great 3-dimensional crystal form, this is a great example of Grossular from its remote Type Locality.