All About Wulfenite
Please Note
We are not currently mining any Wulfenite at this time - the shaft we were working has been filled in for safety reasons. This information is provided for historical reference only.The Purple Passion mine in Arizona produces some very unusual crystal habits for wulfenite. It does have the normal paper-thin blade and an occasional thicker blade with nice beveled edges. These more normal crystal forms vary in color from an opaque butterscotch color, through opaque lemon yellow, to the occasional transparent yellow crystal.
In addition to the normal crystal shapes, there are accicular crystals- (needles) and epitaxial wulfenite on wulfenite- ("fuzzy tabs"). The color is almost always an opaque tan or light brown and we have only seen one micromount where the needle was a transparent tan color. The needles are wulfenite crystals elongated along the C axis so they have 4 sides tapering to a point. They can be singly or doubly terminated. The needles are almost always small usually less than 3/16th of an inch and many of them are micromounts. The largest needles we have ever seen were about 3/4" and they did not survive efforts to trim the 50# piece of matrix.
The epitaxial wulfenite on wulfenite("fuzzy tabs") occur because a later generation of crystal growth caused wulfenite needles to grow on the C faces of blades of wulfenite. The process produces hundreds of tiny needles all grown together so that the points make the C face appear fuzzy. Typically, a dark line can be seen perpendicular to the C face - which shows the position of the original blade hidden beneath the needles. Occasionally the needles are a little bit larger and they form distinct crystals growing from the tab. We have been told that the only other place in the world that has these fuzzytabs is in Sorthern France.
