[2] The mineral was named in 1791 for the locality, Strontian, Argyllshire, Scotland, where the element strontium had been discovered the previous year.

[6] Strontianite is an orthorhombic mineral, belonging to the most symmetrical class in this system, 2/m 2/m 2/m, whose general form is a rhombic dipyramid.

[7] When the CO3 group is combined with large divalent cations with ionic radii greater than 1.0 Å, the radius ratios generally do not permit stable 6-fold coordination.

It is transparent to translucent, with a vitreous (glassy) lustre, resinous on broken surfaces, and a white streak.

[4] Strontianite is an uncommon low-temperature hydrothermal mineral formed in veins in limestone, marl, and chalk, and in geodes and concretions.

[2] Other UK localities include Brownley Hill Mine (Bloomsberry Horse Level), Nenthead, Alston Moor District, North Pennines, North and Western Region (Cumberland), Cumbria, England, associated with a suite of primary minerals (bournonite, millerite and ullmannite) which are not common in other Mississippi Valley-type deposits.

It is found as translucent to opaque, white to pale yellow or beige generally smooth surfaced spheroids, hemispheres and compact spherical and botryoidal aggregates to 10 cm in diameter, and as spheres consisting of numerous radiating acicular crystals, up to 1 cm across.

Also as tufts, parallel bundles, and sheaf-like clusters of fibrous to acicular crystals, and as white, finely granular porcelaneous and waxy globular aggregates.

Transparent, pale pink, columnar to tabular sixling twins up to 1 cm in diameter have been found, and aggregates of stacked stellate sixling twins consisting of transparent, pale yellow tabular crystals.

[2] Commercially important deposits occur in marls in Westphalia,[2] and it is also found with zeolites at Oberschaffhausen, Bötzingen, Kaiserstuhl, Baden-Württemberg.

[2] In Trichy (Tiruchirappalli; Tiruchi), Tiruchirapalli District, Tamil Nadu, it occurs with celestine SrSO4, gypsum and phosphate nodules in clay.

[2] It occurs in the Kirovskii apatite mine, Kukisvumchorr Mt, Khibiny Massif, Kola Peninsula, Murmanskaja Oblast', Northern Region, in late hydrothermal assemblages in cavities in pegmatites, associated with kukharenkoite-(La), microcline, albite, calcite, nenadkevichite, hilairite, catapleiite, donnayite-(Y), synchysite-(Ce), pyrite and others.

[12] It also occurs at Yukspor Mountain, Khibiny Massif, Kola Peninsula, Murmanskaja Oblast', Northern Region, in an aegerine-natrolite-microcline vein in foyaite, associated with aegirine, anatase, ancylite-(Ce), barylite, catapleiite, cerite-(Ce), cerite-(La), chabazite-(Ca), edingtonite, fluorapatite, galena, ilmenite, microcline, natrolite, sphalerite and vanadinite.

[13] At the same locality it was found in alkaline pegmatite veins associated with clinobarylite, natrolite, aegirine, microcline, catapleiite, fluorapatite, titanite, fluorite, galena, sphalerite, annite, astrophyllite, lorenzenite, labuntsovite-Mn, kuzmenkoite-Mn, cerite-(Ce), edingtonite, ilmenite and calcite.

[14] In the Gulf coast of Louisiana and Texas, strontianite occurs with celestine in calcite cap rock of salt domes.

[2] At the Minerva Number 1 Mine (Ozark-Mahoning Number 1 Mine) Ozark-Mahoning Group, Cave-in-Rock, Illinois, in the Kentucky Fluorspar District, Hardin County strontanite occurs as white, brown or rarely pink tufts and bowties of acicular crystals with slightly curved terminations.