Veszelyite with CUPROZHESHENGITE on Hemimorphite

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This colourful small cabinet specimen is not only pretty, but is infused with extremely rare copper- and zinc-bearing species. It is from Sanguozhuang Pb-Zn mine (sometimes referred to as Dongchuan mine) in Dongchuan District, Kunming, Yunnan, China which has, in recent years, produced some of the world's finest specimens of Veszelyite - copper zinc phosphate hydrate hydroxide. Indeed, it is Veszelyite which gives this lovely specimen its vibrant, almost electric-blue colour. Its backdrop is white Hemimorphite, forming a fairly non-descript coating on a thin piece of matrix. The Veszelyite forms a rich coverage of fan-like and bow-tie shaped sprays of curved bladed crystals reaching 3 mm in diameter. Beneath these and lying upon the Hemimorphite is, arguably, a much more important mineral, forming tiny peppermint green spherules and microbotryoidal layers. This is a Dongchuanite Group mineral: four members of this relatively new group of minerals have been named from Sanguozhuang Pb-Zn mine. They all look quite similar and can seamlessly grade from one to the other, but Cuprozheshengite and Cuprodongchuanite are both slightly greener due to their copper content. This specimen shows not only the richness of these fascinating secondary supergene oxidation species, but their aesthetic beauty too. This is a wonderful contextural paragenetic specimen which may well be worthy of detailed chemical analysis. These rare Dongchuanite Group species have only been noted from two localities in China and, unusually for some super rare species, they are quite pretty, albeit with magnification.