I love tourmaline. No other mineral consistently gets me more exited. Heck, I’ve even driven all the way from Portland, Oregon to Pala, California to dig for it. Not only is it a thrill to pull a valuable gem from a dirty pile of rocks, tourmaline is a pegmatite mineral and the ground is usually littered with mica. This creates an almost surreal landscape where everything sparkles! Part of the reason I find tourmaline so alluring is the range and variety of colors that can be displayed in a single crystal. This can be seen lengthwise (bi-color, tricolor, or more), or as a cross section (watermelon). More often the crystals are one solid color with yellowish green being the most common next to black.

Tourmaline is the general name for a group of mineral species that share the same basic crystal structure. Some more familiar tourmaline minerals are Elbaite, Liddicoatite, and Schorl. Their chemical compositions are very complex and tend to remind me of the algebra equations I despised in high school. For example, quartz is SiO_2, and tourmaline can generally be written as (Ca,K,Na,[])(Al,Fe,Li,Mg,Mn)_3 (Al,Cr, Fe,V)_6 (BO_3 )_3 (Si,Al,B)_6 O_18 (OH,F)_4. My head hurts already!

Aside from species, there are names for different color varieties too. The most commonly used are Verdelite (green), Indicolite (blue), and Rubellite (red or pink). There’s also the popular Paraiba tourmaline, an intense blue or green variety colored by copper. All of these make exquisite gems for jewelry. The rough crystals are sought after by collectors as well, and some fine large examples may command a higher price left in their natural state than they would if cut into smaller stones.

Lately tourmaline has become very popular in the cosmetics industry. Have you straightened your hair recently? Tourmaline flat irons are all the rage. Aveda has a whole line of “tourmaline-charged” beauty products. When ground into a superfine powder tourmaline can be just as reflective as mica in makeup.

So hooray for tourmaline, especially pink tourmaline, which is the alternate birthstone for the month of October!

-Kelley