Index to Quartz Digging Cleaning Worth Fee Pay Mines Types Forms Inclusions Geology Mineralogy Synthetic Gemstones Handedness Experiments

Parallel Growth Quartz Jeffrey quarry specimens exhibiting parallel growth habit on floater clusters, North Little Rock, Pulaski County, AR Parallel growth of multiple terminated quartz, Big Cedar Bluff, Saline County, AR In most parallel tabular growth specimens, careful examination will reveal that there was a single string or "faden" crystal that the parallel growth oriented on as it began to form. The parallel tabular crystals have their C axes at some angle, not parallel, to the C axis of the string crystal. These strings, in the few attached Arkansas vein examples I have seen, are typically at close to right angle to the sheet-like form of the vein. In the two Jeffrey specimens pictured above, it appears that the string had broken loose and was suspended in rectorite before the parallel crystal growth was initated. This condition of breakage seems necessary for the formation of true floater specimens in Arkansas. Otherwise there would be a point of attachment on the piece.           Contact the authors of Rockhounding Arkansas Revised July 1998 ©Rockhounding Arkansas 1998 http://rockhoundingAR.com