Minerals Are Not Just Chemical Compounds

Mineral grains are not just chemical compounds; they possess microtexture. The properties of crystallographically near-perfect “gem-quality ” alkali feldspar crystals are contrasted here with those of ordinary, “garden-variety ” specimens, exemplifi ed by perthitic phenocrysts from the granite at Shap, northern England. These are representative of common alkali feldspars in the crust. Two well-studied gem-quality materials (Madagascar orthoclase and Eifel sanidine) vary at the source in microtextural and other properties. Some crystals of Eifel sanidine exhibit much more rapid Si–Al ordering than ordinary feldspars, probably because of the presence of a hydrogen species. The complex microtextures of two feldspars from pegmatites that have been used in studies of dissolution rate, Perth perthite and Keystone microcline, are described and compared with textures in the Shap feldspars. Microtextures, in particular misfi t dislocations on regular exsolution-lamellae of albite, are crucially important in chemical dissolution and mechanical degradation during natural weathering in acid peat soils at Shap. In contrast, during laboratory dissolution-rate experiments carried out far from equilibrium, natural defects are less important than edges and steps produced during the grinding of the samples. Diagenetic replacement-type reactions in an overlying conglomerate at Shap are also strongly sensitive to microtexture. In arkosic sandstones in the Jurassic Fulmar Formation of the central North Sea, the detrital alkali feldspar inventory has been subject to microtextural winnowing, with relatively defect-free varieties of alkali feldspar being relatively more abundant than would be expected from the distribution of rock types known in the North Sea catchment.