Allanite from Franklin, NJ

Allanite-(Ce) - dark brown to black crystal shapes, often with radial cracks around them
Dolomite - dull gray
Quartz - dull gray
Goethite and other iron oxides - brown, yellowish-brown

Allanite occurs most commonly as brittle "crystals" which actually have very little organized crystal structure remaining. They retain the outward shape and appearance of the original crystal, however. The word for this is "metamict". At one time in geologic history the crystals were slightly more radioactive, because they contained more uranium and / or thorium. The radioactive decay of these has destroyed the crystal structure. Today the allanite crystals contain only small amounts of uranium / thorium. The radioactivity is very weak. When I say weak, I mean it; you may get a few clicks on a Geiger counter if you put the probe almost directly against the crystals.

Allanite is an accessory mineral in many igneous rock environments. Sometimes it occurs in larger amounts. Coarse-grained igneous rocks can also house significant amounts of monazite and radioactive zircon ("cyrtolite"). If you live in New England, New York, northwestern NJ, or other igneous / metamorphic rock environments, you probably have more radioactivity in and under your house than there'd be in all the allanite specimens you'll ever find on your trips to Franklin. (You cannot escape radioactivity; it's even in your own body, from carbon-14 and potassium-40!)

Allanite is an interesting mineral that occurs primarily in the pegmatite regions of the Franklin deposit. I do not know of any allanite that ever occured within the actual orebody. Any time you find a rock with allanite crystals in it, you probably won't find any good fluorescent minerals (though willemite and microcline do occasionally occur with it... oh, and hydrozincite).

As a side note, willemite muscled its way into regions that weren't even in the Franklin orebody. It found its way into the "pegmatite" zones. Sometimes it even got into the dolomite! Willemite is so powerful that, if it could, it would muscle its way out of this website and into your livingroom. It would form exsolution structures with your decor. Everything would fluoresce bright green.

Anyway, that's beside the point, since we're talking about allanite here. I'm just saying, where you find allanite, you might also find willemite. You just won't find certain things, like clinohedrite or hardystonite.

Allanite is appealing to micromounteres and species collectors. It sometimes occurs with other rare-earth minerals, some of which are hard to characterize because (like allanite) they lack any crystal structure that can be analyzed with the typical methods.

By the way, the (Ce) after "allanite" refers to cerium. Allanite can be dominant in cerium (Ce), yttrium (Y), or lanthanum (La).