Poor howlite is a creamy white colored mineral that never got a lot of attention until one day someone realized you could dye it different colors. Specifically, it’s easy to dye about the same color as turquoise, and, as a result, a lot of supposedly turquoise jewelry people sell these days is made with dyed howlite. If you don’t dye it, it can look a lot like cauliflower, though you can also cut and polish it into nice cabochons that definitely wouldn’t remind you of a vegetable. It wasn’t named after the noise wolves make or anything like that. Instead, it was named after a humble Canadian scientist named How, who discovered it and was calling it silicoborocalcite (because it has silicon (Si), boron (B), and calcium (Ca) in it), until Dana, the father of mineral classification, decided “howlite” would be a lot simpler!