Tree Agate Tumbled Stone

Tree agate is a white-to-grey chalcedony - microcrystalline quartz, SiO₂, Mohs 7 - holding green dendrites that branch through it like ferns or trees. The "tree" is entirely mineral: manganese and iron oxides that crept along fine cracks and branched as they grew, before the chalcedony sealed around them.

It is the opaque white cousin of moss agate - where moss agate floats its green in translucent silica, tree agate sets it against a solid, milky-white ground, so the branching reads sharp and clear.

Because the dendrites grew freely, no two beads carry the same pattern; some hold a single spreading branch, others a dense thicket of green.

Asked often

Is there real plant inside?
No - nothing organic. The branching green is manganese and iron oxide, minerals that grew in tree-like forms before the chalcedony sealed. Plant-like, but stone throughout.

How is it different from moss agate?
Both are dendritic chalcedony. Moss agate floats its green in translucent stone; tree agate sets it against an opaque milky-white ground, so the branches read crisp and bold.

Why is every bead different?
The dendrites grew freely along cracks, so each bead holds its own pattern. The variation is the stone, not a fault.

How do I look after them?
Wipe with a soft, slightly damp cloth and dry. Hard-wearing at Mohs 7 and stable in daylight.

1. Carried in a pocket or a bag, or held in the hand.
2. Kept in a small dish, on a desk, or on a shelf - each stone is a little different.
3. Wipe with a soft, slightly damp cloth and dry; hard-wearing at Mohs 7.

Each stone is tumble-polished and unique, so a set varies a little stone to stone. Many keep a stone where they will see it each day, or carry one in a pocket; that is a matter of preference.

Pocket stones to keep and carry. Wipe with a soft cloth; hard-wearing at Mohs 7. Keep them together in a pouch so harder edges do not scratch softer stones.

• Stone: Tree Agate · dendritic chalcedony
• Hardness: Mohs 7
• Character: White ground · green branching · each unique
• Treatment: None · undyed
• Form: Tumbled stones · polished, each unique · sold in a set
• Origin: India
• Care: Wipe with a soft cloth · keep dry

Dendritic stones have fascinated collectors since antiquity - Pliny wrote of agates marked with the figures of trees, and lapidaries across the centuries set them as miniature landscapes into rings, seals, and snuffboxes. Tree agate is the boldest of them, its green drawn sharp on white.

In several traditions the tree-marked stone was carried as a token of the gardener and the growing field - named here as what people believed. The branches are mineral grown in stone; what they bring to mind is the wearer’s.