Jade

Most of us are familiar with green jade but jade also comes in the following colors, black, white, orange, purple, brown, yellow, pink, red, blue, gray & mixes of these colors. The most valuable variety of jade is the emerald green jadeite, known as "imperial jade". Jade comes in two forms, Jadeite & Nephrite. Nephrite is the more common. Jadeite & Nephrite have very different mineral compositions. Jadeite is an aluminum-rich pyroxene and nephrite is a magnesium-rich amphibole. Visually they look so much the same that they ended up with the common name jade.