TumbleStone Calendar 2026: April – Poppy Jaspers

The Introduction to this Calendar can be found here. 

The month of April features four poppy jasper stones from Gemstone Beach and McCracken’s Rest on the shores of Te Waewae Bay in Southland. Jasper is usually the term for a type of chalcedony or microcrystalline quartz. It is opaque due to the presence of minerals which give it colour, with the red of iron oxide being most common. Jasper is usually classified as sedimentary, precipitating from solutions moving through the ground. Orbicular jaspers form due to the presence of minerals which crystallise in concentric layers around a nucleus or central point, giving rise to very small orb-like structures. If the orbs are red or orange, they look like a field of poppies from above. Usually the presence of black/silvery hematite can also be observed in these stones. They are relatively rare, not often found on this coast, and not at many other places in New Zealand. For more on poppy jaspers, see “O is for Opaque Orepuki Orbicular Jasper” and “A Selective Annotated Index to Poppy Jaspers in TumbleStone Blog”.

Stone One (top row, left, in the Calendar) is an example of a poppy jasper with larger orbs. In such stones, the orbs have an internal structure, most often three or four radiating lines from the centre:

Stone One was one of two poppy jaspers I found on Gemstone Beach on 14 August 2025, on a cool and sunny morning. Stone Two (top row, right, in the Calendar) is also from Gemstone Beach, found on 19 March 2025. It is tiny, the size of my small fingernail, but the close-up photos reveal an amazing set of patterns, some of which are orbicular:

Photos of another side of the same stone, also showing the patches of black hematite:

Stone Three (bottom row, left, in the Calendar) is an example of a poppy jasper with very tiny orbs, a contrast to Stone One:

I found this stone at McCracken’s Rest, just to the west of Gemstone Beach, on 13 August 2025, one of three found there that day, the first time I had found poppy jaspers at McCracken’s Rest. Some white quartz can be seen near the top of the stone.

I chose Stone Four (bottom row, left, in the Calendar) because the size and character of its orbs come somewhere in-between Stones One and Three:

I found it on Gemstone Beach on 6 March 2024, one of three found that day, after stormy seas had turned over the stones. Dark hematite is here again, with tiny silvery specks, along with a little white quartz in the lower right.

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 stones of May are covered in the next Post in this Series.