Some pieces of rough have flaws like minor cracks and inclusions. The color ranges from a fiery orangeish-red to a rich purplish-red.
Red beryl, once called 'red emerald,' 'scarlet emerald' or 'bixbite,' is a very rare gem in nature, far rarer than its green cousin emerald. It matches emerald's intensity of color with its own opposite hue. While natural crystals clean enough to be faceted are vanishingly rare lab-grown crystals are only very uncommon.
Beryl is one of the most classic gem families but it turns out it is rather difficult to grow in the lab. It can't be made by flame fusion or pulling methods, leaving the flux (slow and expensive and poisonous) and hydrothermal (slow and expensive and potentially explosive) methods. Still, it compensates for that with its incredible range of colors, providing the gems emerald, morganite, aquamarine, heliodor and red beryl.
This one is a bit unusual for us since it wasn't grown for science--these are old vintage crystals that were grown in Russia for gem usage. However, I will note that occasionally lasers are made using an emerald crystal rod. The papers always have justifications about it being a good crystal matrix to hold chromium--but I suspect it has more to do with scientists proving that they can.
