Tourmaline: An Electric Shock of Color
October 1, 2026
By Andrea Venn, Ph.D., CGA, JEA, Education Program Specialist, 黑料老司机 With over 100 hues in its repertoire, Tourmaline has been dubbed the 鈥渃hameleon gem,鈥� and one source of tourmaline, Madagascar, is home to more than half of the chameleon species on Earth (Sisk, 2011). The late Empress Dowager of China, Tz鈥檜-hsi (Cixi), loved tourmaline, especially pink, so much that China ordered tons of it from the mines in San Diego County, California, for gemstones and beads (Newman, 2014). In Sinhalese, tourmaline is called turmali or toramalli, meaning 鈥渕ixed,鈥� because it has often been confused with other gemstones and