Beryl Species Part 3 Precious Beryl

Hi everyone,

Today I would like to finish up the section on Beryl.  We will be looking at the precious beryl family.  These gemstones are the ones that are not emerald and aquamarine.  I hope you will enjoy the journey of learning today and I hope you will learn something new and exciting about precious beryl.  I, myself am not really familiar with precious beryl so this blog will bring many new and exciting information for me to learn.  I hope you have fun on the journey of precious beryl.

So let's talk precious beryl.  The information I am using is from the book Gemstones of the World by Walter Schumann. The colours of precious beryl range from gold-yellow, yellow-green, yellow, pink and colourless.  The colour streak is white and the Mohs hardness is 7.5-8.  The density is 2.66-2.87.  The cleavage is indistinct and the chemical composition is aluminum beryllium silicate.  The transparency is transparent to opaque. The crystal structure is hexagonal, hexagonal prisms.

According to Mr. Walter Schumann, precious beryl refers to all colour varieties of the beryl group that are not emerald or aquamarine.  These gemstones are brittle and are sensitive to pressure.  There are special names for some of the colours.  Bixbite is for the raspberry red colour of beryl.  The origin of the name is not known. Because of this there are many scientists that do not accept bixbite as a separate variety.  Golden Beryl has the colour range of lemon yellow to golden yellow.  Inclusions in this gemstone are rare.  Golden Beryl is found in Brazil, Madagascar, Namibia, Nigeria, Zimbabwe and Sri Lanka.  Goshenite is the colourless beryl and is so named because it is located in Goshen, Massachusetts.  It has been used as an imitation diamond.  It can also be used for an imitation emerald by applying silver or green metal foil to the cut stone.  It can be found in Brazil, China, Canada, Mexico, Russia and the United States. Helidor is Greek for present of the sun.  This gemstone is a light yellow green colour.  The gemstone was discovered in 1910 in Namibia but there have been other beryls of the same colour discovered previously in Brazil and Madagascar.  Helidor is generally not accepted as it is hard to distinguish between the yellow and green yellow colours of golden beryl, so it is considered as being weak coloured golden beryls.  Morganite also known as pink beryl has the soft pink to violet colours.  Inclusions are rare in this gemstone.  Morganite is named after the American banker J.P. Morgan.  This gemstone is found in Afghanistan, Brazil, China, Madagascar, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and the United States.

I hope everyone had fun learning about the wonderful world of Precious Beryl.  I know I learned quite a few new things and had a great time learning about them.  Please let me know what you think of this post.  I would really enjoy hearing from you so please drop me a line.  Until next time.

The rare gem lady