March 24, 2014

Monday Geology Picture(s): Dendrites in the Tile Shop

Posted by Evelyn Mervine

Pretty dendritic minerals on display in a Cape Town tile shop.

Pretty dendritic minerals on display in a Cape Town tile shop.

First of all, my apologies for missing the “Monday Geology Picture” post last week. I’ve been extremely busy recently with work and also preparing for a much-needed vacation. Actually, I’m on vacation right now, so I’ve set this to auto-post. Never fear, though… when I return in early April I will finish my “Sutherland Sky” series of blog posts. Also, I will be reviving the “Geology Word of the Week”.

For today, I wanted to share a few pictures of some dendritic minerals (probably some sort of manganese-rich mineral) that I observed on some tiles that were on display in a local tile shop here in Cape Town, South Africa. My husband and I were at the tile shop recently looking for some new tiles for our bathroom. We didn’t select these dendrite-decorated tiles, but I couldn’t resist taking a few pictures of them. I think dendritic minerals are just beautiful.

Here’s a closer view of the dendrite-decorated tiles, with my hand for scale:

Another view of the pretty dendritic minerals, with my hand for scale.

Another view of the pretty dendritic minerals, with my hand for scale.

And here’s a wider view showing the tile display:

Dendrite-decorated display tiles.

Dendrite-decorated display tiles.