Winter tends to be a good time to beach comb. In the winter in certain spots on the north shore of Long Island, sand shifts out to sea for a while. As summer approaches it gets swept back in. This constant shifting of the earth lends itself to interesting things being uncovered during seasonal change.

One such exciting find for me this season happens to be January’s birthstone, tiny garnets growing in shiny mica. The image below shows about 4 tiny, raw garnets growing in mica. The garnets are brownish red in color and these raw gems are probably no larger than 3 mm. Too tiny to be cut into usable semi precious gems for jewelry making I’ll enjoy them as is, growing and nesseled in their host stone, mica.

There are many varieties of garnet. To name a few there is the reddish purple variety; tsovite, almandine, pyrope, rhodolite and tsavorite which is blueish green to yellow. Check out my blog post dated January 7, for more information on this beautiful semi precious gem stone.

It’s interesting to note that a perfect garnet crystal has been found in a natural diamond. The word garnet comes from the 14th century Middle English work gernet, meaning “dark red.” The word is derived form Latin granatum, which means “seed” and is called so because of the gemstone’s resemblance to the beautiful red seeds of the pomegranate.