A greenish black to creamy white ornamental stone or gemstone, highly valued in China and Korea. Translucent emerald-green jadeite is the most prized variety.Rarely also blue, lavender-mauve and pink in colour, depending on mineralogy and impurity elements.
Many different rocks and minerals have been marketed as jade, especially
nephrite and
serpentine, but also green quartz, vesuvianite (
californite), etc. Gemmologists, however, usually restrict the name to just
jadeite and nephrite, both characteristically forming very tough, fine grained rocks. Nephrite is much more common than jadeite, and is a
tremolite and/or
actinolite-rich rock.