aggregate
Unakite
- Also known as
- epidotised granite
- Crystal system
- variable
- Hardness
- 6–7 on the Mohs scale
- Lustre
- vitreous
- Colour
- Mottled pistachio green and salmon pink
- Where it forms
- By hydrothermal alteration of granite, where circulating fluids converted the feldspar to epidote while leaving the pink potassium feldspar and the quartz intact.
- Chiefly from
- Unaka Range, North Carolina and Tennessee, United StatesSouth AfricaZimbabweBrazil
Why it is that colour
The green is epidote, the pink is potassium feldspar, and the clear grains are quartz. It is a granite in which the original plagioclase has been altered to epidote.
Safety
Safe to handle.
Where it comes from
Common and cheap, widely tumbled. South African and Brazilian material supplies most of the market.
Historical use
A minor ornamental stone, used for beads, tumbled pieces and building decoration.
Recorded as history and attributed where possible. That a stone was used for something establishes that people used it, not that it worked.
What is attributed to it, and since when
Described and named in 1874 after the Unaka mountains. It has no traditional history whatsoever, and its meanings date from the modern crystal literature.
Described, not endorsed. Dating a claim is not the same as assessing it — but an association that first appears in a book published in 1985 is not an ancient inheritance, whatever the label says. A sincere account of feeling better is compatible with the stone doing nothing — see the placebo effect.
Worth knowing
Unakite is a rock with a name, which is a slightly unusual thing in the trade — most rocks sold as crystals get given a mineral-sounding name instead. It is granite that has been chemically altered in place, and it is genuinely useful to geologists as a marker of hydrothermal activity.
It is also here to make a point about proportions. Being a rock, its composition varies: one piece may be mostly pink, another mostly green, and both are unakite. Nothing in a rock is fixed. A stone described by its appearance is described by an accident.
Identity checked against IMA-CNMNC master list, June 2025.