Aegirine

Unknown Owner

A fabulous divergent spray of thick black-green Aegirine crystals to over 8 cm from the alkali pegmatites of the Mount Malosa area of Zomba District, Malawi, East Africa. The hexagonal crystals have smooth, mirror-like prism faces with a brilliant glassy lustre and are opaque, allowing no passage of transmitted light. The intensity of the dark green colour causes the prism faces to appear jet-black, but around their base, and at their slightly feathered terminations, the true deep mossy-bottle-green can be observed. With a little associated crystallised Quartz and Feldspar, this is a beautiful specimen of Aegirine from the famous occurrence in Malawi.