porphyritic rock

thumb|Porphyritic texture in a granite. This is an Intrusive rock|intrusive porphyritic rock. The white, square feldspar [[phenocrysts are much larger than crystals in the surrounding matrix; eastern Sierra Nevada, Rock Creek Canyon, California.]] thumb|A porphyritic volcanic sand grain, as seen under the petrographic microscope. The large grain in the middle is of a much different size class than the small needle-like crystals around it. Scale box in millimeters. Porphyritic is an adjective used in geology to describe igneous rocks with a distinct difference in the size of mineral crystals, with the larger crystals known as phenocrysts. Both extrusive and intrusive rocks can be porphyritic, meaning all types of igneous rocks can display some degree of porphyritic texture. Most porphyritic rocks have bimodal size ranges, meaning the rock is composed of two distinct sizes of crystal.

In extrusive rocks, the phenocrysts are surrounded by a fine-grained (aphanitic) matrix or groundmass of volcanic glass or non-visible crystals, commonly seen in porphyritic basalt. Porphyritic intrusive rocks have a matrix with individual crystals easily distinguished with the eye, but one group of crystals appearing clearly much bigger than the rest, as in a porphyritic granite.