Trees to 40 m tall; bark dark gray or dark gray-brown, rough, flaking or breaking into irregular plates; branchlets red-brown, gray-brown, or light brown, glabrous, pubescent, or ± rusty brown pubescent; winter buds ovoid or subglobose, resinous. Leaves ascending on upper side of branchlets, pectinately arranged in 2 lateral sets on lower side, dark green and bright adaxially, oblanceolate-linear, flattened, 1-2.5(-3) cm × 1.5-4 mm, stomatal lines in 2 white bands abaxially, resin canals 2, median or marginal, apex emarginate, rarely obtuse or acute. Seed cones ripening dark purple or red-brown, slightly glaucous or not, cylindric or shortly so, 3-10 × 3-4 cm. Seed scales at middle of cones reniform or flabellate-reniform, 0.8-1.5 × 1.3-2 cm. Bracts obovate-cuneate, distal margin erose-denticulate, apex with cusp exserted or slightly so. Seeds obtriangular-ovoid; wing cuneate.
Mixed and coniferous forests in mountains, sometimes forming pure stands, growing mainly in grey-brown mountain podzols; at elevations from 2,000-4,000 metres, but mainly at 3,400-3,800 metres.
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