The crystals here are black, lustrous, and 1-2mm in size. They richly cover one side of the matrix, and the povondraite winds its way through the fissures in the rock.
Povondraite is a rare silicate mineral from the tourmaline group with formula: NaFe3+3(Fe3+4,Mg2)(BO3)3Si6O18(OH)3O.[2] It is a dark brown to black nearly opaque mineral with a resinous to splendent luster. It crystallizes in the trigonal crystal system as equant, distorted prisms with trigonal pyramid terminations.[3][2]
Discovered at the San Francisco mine, near Villa Tunari (in Alto Chapare), Bolivia, in 1976, originally it was called ferridravite, for the composition and the assumed relationship to dravite, i.e., "ferric dravite".[4] However later investigations yielded a new empirical formula which had no relation to the dravite. This called for renaming, and the new name, after Pavel Povondra (1924–2013),[5] a mineralogist at the Charles University in Prague, was approved by the International Mineralogical Association in the 1990s.[6]
