Dragon Spruce

Description

tall tree with broadly conical crown reaching 25 m high with gray-brown bark and horizontal branches that become more pendulous on older trees, the tips ascending. Young shoots thin, gray-yellow, glossy, pubescent, deeply furrowed (often also glabrous in cultivation), swollen leaf cushions buds oval-conical, 8 to 15 mm long(!), yellow-brown, resinous, the scales loosely appressed and somewhat recurved at theapex (very important characteristic!); needles radially bluish-green, 10 to 20 mm long, directed forward, 4-sided in cross-section, with 3 to 4 stomatal lines on either side; cones cylindrical, 8 to 10 cm long, light brown at first, eventually chestnut-brown, the scales obovate, stiff and woody, the seeds oblong, red-brown, somewhat shorter than the seed scales.