Budding Certus Quartz
(also see Certus Growth)
Certus quartz buds will sprout from budding certus blocks, similar to amethyst. These are found in meteorites. There are 4 tiers of budding certus blocks: Flawless, Flawed, Chipped, and Damaged. They can be most easily identified with a mod like HWYLA, Jade, The One Probe, etc. (or the f3 screen)
With flawed, chipped, and damaged budding certus, every time a bud grows by another stage, the budding block has a chance to degrade by one tier, eventually turning into a plain Certus Quartz Block.
Flawless budding certus will not degrade from growing buds, and act as an infinite source.
If broken with a regular pickaxe, budding certus blocks will degrade by 1 tier. If broken with a pickaxe enchanted with silk touch, they will not degrade, unless they were flawless. This means that flawless budding certus blocks cannot be picked up and moved with a pickaxe. Instead, Spatial Storage can be used to cut-and-paste the flawless budding blocks around.
Recipes
Flawed, chipped, and damaged budding certus can be crafted by throwing the previous tier of budding block (or a Certus Quartz Block) in water with one or more Charged Certus Quartz Crystal.
Flawless budding certus cannot be crafted, only found in the world.