March 2025 Stone Collecting Trip – Part 17, A Tiny Gorgeous Patterned Jasper, Gemstone Beach, Wednesday 19 March

At Gemstone Beach this morning, it was possible to ford the Taunoa Stream again. I ran into Shona, Lee and Brian further down the beach – they’ve been down here from Pahiatua for nearly a week. They seem to be finding some very good stones now. At one stage there were seven of us fossickers down near the Waimeamea River – six of them I know live in the North Island (don’t know about the seventh).

Shona found a really interesting glassy variation of hydrogrossular garnet (photos below) which I have called the seventh type – see my June 2022 Post “Hydrogrossular Garnet”. [Later I wondered whether it could be chromite in quartz…] Lee kindly gave me a very good trace fossil stone she found.

I took home 50 finds today, seven of them featured below. The best stone I found was a tiny, one centimetre long, hematite poppy jasper, the size of my small fingernail. The patterns within it are amazing:

When I picked it up on the beach, I thought there was something going on inside it but couldn’t really tell with the naked eye. The photos revealed a special composition.

This stone caught my eye because of the tiny quartz pieces in it. I think the light green is likely to be epidote:

A similar stone, but with more black in it this time:

There’s a lot more epidote in the next find, and the green vein caught my eye on the beach:

Another way that epidote can be present in a stone:

Many trace fossils on Gemstone Beach are to be found in greenish argillite, again with epidote providing the green hue:

This argillite, with interesting patterns, could have epidote in it but there’s a blue tinge in there:

A small light-brown trace fossil stone, with nice traces on both sides:

What is likely to be a thulite:

Finally, the best of today’s hydrogrossular finds for me:

For those interested, this Post contains a brief discussion of the colour green and the minerals that cause green in stones, including epidote.

Part 18 features seven stones from my 12th fossick on Gemstone Beach this month. An Index to this Series is here.