3.1" Green Fluorite Crystal Cluster - South Africa

Riemvasmaak is a small town located in the Kakamas District of South Africa. It is well-known for the octahedral fluorite crystals mined in the Kakamas Zone of this region. This zone is located around the Orange River in South Africa, where countless quartz and fluorite veins can be found. The fluorite from this zone is primarily a vibrant green color, but the highest quality specimens featuring wonderful transparency. Other colors (orange, purple, blue, colorless and yellow) of fluorite aren't unheard of out of this location.

The fluorite is often found with an aggregation of quartz coating the crystals. Various methods are used to remove this quartz, but in some cases the quartz crystals will be left on a specimen. This typically depends on the quality of the crystals.

Fluorite is a halide mineral comprised of calcium and fluorine, CaF2. The word fluorite is from the Latin fluo-, which means "to flow". In 1852 fluorite gave its name to the phenomenon known as fluorescence, or the property of fluorite to glow a different color depending upon the bandwidth of the ultraviolet light it is exposed to. Fluorite occurs commonly in cubic, octahedral, and dodecahedral crystals in many different colors. These colors range from colorless and completely transparent to yellow, green, blue, purple, pink, or black. Purples and greens tend to be the most common colors seen, and colorless, pink, and black are the rarest.