The Introduction to this Calendar can be found here. The Calendar features groups of beach stones I have collected recently, a different group each month. The stones are rough (un-polished) and usually wet, showing their colours and details. These 2026 Calendars are for sale, with postage within New Zealand included, for $35 non-rural, $40 rural. Two Calendars to the same address cost $60 non-rural, $65 rural. Three Calendars to the same address cost $85 non-rural, $90 rural. Email me at john.tumblestone@gmail.com.
The month of January features five green-hued stones, all found on Gemstone Beach, Southland, in 2025. In New Zealand, we tend to associate green and stones with greenstone, especially pounamu or nephrite jade. However, the beaches I visit don’t have this stone. Nevertheless, I do find green stones, some of them quite intense in colour. For some information on the colour green in relation to stones, see “Gemstone Beach and its Stones: An Introduction for the Passing Motorist – Part Seven-A, Green Argillite Stones”. The following outlines the character and source of January’s five green stones. The photos used are the original ones used in the Calendar.
Stone One (top row, left, in the Calendar) is a strong green with angular patches of a speckled material. The patches seem to have a light green border around them:
I can’t decide what kind of stone this is. It could be a breccia, made up of fragments of the speckled material cemented together in the green mineral (the month of November features four breccia stones). Or it could be made up of the speckled material which has then been flooded with the green mineral that has invaded only part of the stone. The green mineral is likely to be epidote (see “E is for Epidote”). I found this stone in August 2025 during a three hour fossick on a cool Southland morning. This was the seventh visit I had made to Gemstone Beach that month. I also found Stone Three there that morning. For a good introduction to Gemstone Beach, see this Post, which describes the kilometre or so of the Te Waewae Bay coast that I usually walk to look for stones, and this Post, which describes the smaller area of Gemstone Beach in detail.
Stone Two (top row, right, in the Calendar) is also a Gemstone Beach find but from earlier in 2025, in March, picked up on the day of an earthquake. It is likely to be a mix of quartz and epidote:
That there was an earthquake that day is appropriate as this stone is a tectonic breccia – tectonic stress has fragmented the lower left quadrant and then silica and epidote have filled the gaps.
I found Stone Three (bottom row, left, in the Calendar) the same day I found Stone One, on 12 August 2025. It looks to have a few large green spots in it:
The large green spots could be rounded fragments of a green stone, cemented in white quartz material, which would make this a conglomerate. A conglomerate has rounded fragments in it while a breccia has angular fragments. However, there are a few smaller green fragments in the stone which are angular. An alternative identification is that the green features in the stone are crystals of some kind, again probably epidote. I am unsure.
Stone Four (bottom row, centre, in the Calendar) was found on Gemstone Beach in March 2025. It has a dash of iron oxide red mixed in with the epidote green, with a spot of purplish iron oxide in its lower right:
Like Stone Two it is a tectonic breccia, having been fragmented by stress forces.
Stone Five (bottom row, right, in the Calendar) is the most intense green of the month’s stones. I found it the same day I found Stone Two:
Among the features of this stone are small fragments of clear and milky quartz.
For February’s stones, see this Post.
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