Chemically, it is close to turquoise and amblygonite. The monoclinic crystals are usually prismatic in form. The cleavage is perfect in one direction parallel to one of the pinacoid faces. The material is brittle and shows a conchoidal fracture. There is no luminescence when the stone is subjected to ultra-violet light and no definitive absorption spectrum has been observed.
The material was discovered in 1944 in a pegmatite dyke near Conselheira Pena in Minas Gerais, Brazil. At first the crystals were thought to be chrysoberyl because of the similarity in color. More careful examinations revealed a crystallographic structure dissimilar to chrysoberyl which was later determined to be a completely new mineral that was named Braziliante in honor of the country in which the stones were found.
