PYROMORPHITE

ABOUT THE SPECIMEN Vivid apple-green crystals of pyromorphite shooting out of a plate of limonitic matrix. This piece comes from one of the world's premier locations for this species, from one of the finer pockets to have been found in recent years. The crystals are lustrous and in fantastic condition. With the eye-catching color and dynamic appearance of the specimen, this stands out as a great small cabinet sample.   VIDEO   MORE INFO The Daoping deposit is a hydrothermal Pb-Zn system hosted in Devonian Wuzhishan Formation limestone, sandstone, and shale intruded by granite and lamprophyre dykes in the karst terrain south of Guilin - a setting in which open cavity development within the carbonate host rock directly enabled the exceptional crystal growth documented here. Pyromorphite formed secondarily in the oxidized lead zone, with green coloration driven by interactions between lead, phosphate, and chloride ions in the hexagonal crystal structure rather than any discrete trace chromophore. Discoveries beginning in 1999, formally documented by Liu and Ottens in the Mineralogical Record (2005), produced hexagonal prisms and barrel-shaped crystals reaching several centimeters - extraordinary for the species - in colors spanning pale yellow-green through saturated apple-green to dark forest-green, with occasional yellow-orange. The "Apple Green Pocket" of 2003–2004 yielded some of the most coveted cabinet-scale material, with translucent prisms to 2 cm on cerussite matrix and incipient hopper growth at terminations. Since the Daoping and Yangshuo mines connected underground in 2003, precise attribution of later material between the two operations is genuinely ambiguous. The finest early-find pieces have been absorbed steadily into permanent collections, and nothing from subsequent production has matched the 2003–2004 benchmark.