Quartz, one of the most abundant minerals in the earth crust and also a very important mineral, occurs in large quantities in igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic rocks as well as in some hydrothermal systems. Petrogenesis, oxygen-isotope and trace element geochemistry, physical properties and defect microstructures of quartz and chalcedony have been studied by mineralogists and geologists in the past two decades, but some related problems are still in controversy. Due to wide distribution and highly stable nature of quartz, a variety of petrologic, isotopic and geochemical provenance techniques have been developed over the past two decades to study the provenance of detrital quartz. Integrated scanning electron microscope CL, electron microprobe CL and optical microscopy analysis of single quartz grains are fairly simple and inexpensive techniques and are efficient methods for visualizing microtextures in minerals that are invisible in conventional transmitted-bight microscopy. Quartz cathodoluminescene is commonly applied to decipher complex histories of geological process; however, the causes of quartz cathodoluminescence remain poorly understood, which may involve the variations in trace element concentrations in quartz. Different mechanisms of trace element uptake into the quartz lattice are discussed. For example, some trace elements in quartz may generally be incorporated into the crystal structure or bound in microinclusions (fluid mineral inclusions), and only a small amount of "foreign" elements can be incorporated into the crystal lattice; the substitutional incorporation of Al, Ge, Ti, Ga, Fe, H and P into Si position is well established. Cathodoluminescene may help establish the succession of paragenetic associations in minerals and a wide variety of rocks, such as growth zoning, randomly oriented microcracks and healed microfractures, homogeneous patchy or mottled CL, deformed lamelae, grain shattering and dissolution or alteration features. The distinguishable characteristics among volcanic rock, pluton, sedimentation, metamorphism and quartz in veins are systematically summarized on the basis of the authors' recent research and literature reviews. The relationship between trace element geochemistry, cathodoluminescence texture and characteristics of cathodoluminescence are discussed. In the end of this paper, the authors attempt to provide a flow chart to illustrate theidentification of various kinds of quartz in nature.