Calcite

This Calcite is without doubt the most unusual crystal habit I have ever encountered from anywhere in the world.  Picture a classical cornucopia, also called the horn of plenty, normally depicted as a large horn-shaped container.  Now picture, if you can, six of these, but formed from colourless Calcite in a tight, conical cluster, all emanating from a common, narrow base and gradually splaying outwards to a flat truncated top.  It is amazing and much more akin to botanical morphology than mineralogical.   The flat terminations of each “horn” are all level with each other, and each is then hoppered inwards to form stepped depressions which descend back down into the horn.  Each crystal is more like a solitary coral or an exotic woodland fungus.  Beautiful elongate prismatic Calcite crystals of 1 to 2 cm tall cluster around both the base and the apex’s circumference.  A sensational and wonderfully aesthetic specimen.