Flowerstone is relatively rare on east coast Vancouver Island beaches, with just a few pieces expected to be found per trip. But I headed inland on a hunch and stumbled on a large deposit of the aptly named porphyry.
Flowerstone, also known as Chrysanthemum Stone. These were the first couple chunks I found right when I got here, and then I knew the hunt was on.
The flowers pictured above aren’t representative of the majority of Flowerstone I found. The picture below is. On the beach, Flowerstone is quite varied in appearance, but this location had a large amount of similar-looking stuff.
A few pieces of many Flowerstones like this. Still scummy from the river and unpolished.
Flowerstone through the water.
I collected a bunch of good-looking Flowerstone that all looked similar. Apparently, there are Flowerstone deposits on Vancouver Island beyond the beach. Someone could mine this stuff. I’m going to map out the full extent of this occurrence.
Here was the gravel bar and river where I was finding all the Flowerstone. British Columbia has been hit with another heat wave and it was nice to wade around in the water all day.
A collection of nice rocks. Top right is petrified wood, top left I’m guessing is as well but might be just a mess of quartz, bottom left is Flowerstone and bottom right is Dallasite.
I’m used to having to walk past Dallasite on the beach because my bucket is too full of it already, but I would never walk by a Flowerstone. The tables turned in this location, where I picked up just a few chunks of Dallasite and was leaving boulders of Flowerstone for next time.
One day, maybe, I’ll have a business using Flowerstone for landscape rocks.