This darker deep honey-colored ice tea hue is known as Madeira citrine. This photo demos another common baked citrine formation, the druse.
Also heat-treated citrine will be sort of crumbly & break apart easily since heating the stones at the temps necessary does seem to weaken the stability of the crystals. If it’s heat-treated citrine, the color will be most concentrated at the tips but white at the bottom (see photos below). It’s not always an easy task but let me give you a few pointers. Sometimes when people find out that much of the citrine on the market isn’t a Mama Earth Creation, they may go into a mini-panic, thinking that they’ve been duped or that their heat-treated citrine is totally useless. So much so that over the years as I received many questions about it I’ve created a few videos to talk about the topic & show some examples. Lab-heated citrine seems to be a sore spot with many. It’s usually done in a dusty warehouse by the miners themselves no lab coats or anything. Now, I’m saying “lab” in this post for ease & flow but often times the heating we’re talking about here isn’t done in a lab at all. Maybe the crystals have been molecularly bonded, irradiated, tumbled, cut, polished, or even heat-treated in a lab. Others may be drawn to the beauty of crystals that have been enhanced in some way but they may be totally unaware that they have been artificially altered. Some crystal peeps prefer their crystals to be all-natural as they were found in Mother Nature, in the raw. Right? But do you know if your citrine is real or fake citrine…
Aren’t they? Well, what does fake citrine have to do with all of this?Īnd we all love citrine. Crystals are remarkable and glorious gifts from Mother Earth.