Trees to 30 m tall; bark grayish green or yellowish gray and smooth when young, gray and deeply furrowed when old; crown spreading. Branchlets reddish at first, becoming gray, terete, stout, densely pubescent. Buds brightly colored, conical, viscid. Leaves of fruiting branchlets with petiole terete, 1-4 cm, pilose; leaf blade broadly elliptic, obovate-elliptic, elliptic, or broadly ovate, 5-10(-14) × 3-6 cm, abaxially glaucous, adaxially dark green, wrinkled or ± smooth, both surfaces pubescent along veins, base subcordate or suborbicular, margin glandular crenate-serrate, ciliate, apex shortly acuminate or acute, usually twisted. Leaves of sprouts with leaf blade broadly ovate-orbicular or long ovate, larger than others, shorter than petiole. Male catkin 5-10 cm; rachis glabrous; bracts laciniate. Male flower: stamens 30-40. Fruiting catkin 10-18 cm. Capsule ovoid-globose, glabrous, 3- or 4-valved, sessile or subsessile. Fl. Apr-May, fr. May-Jun.

Used for wood pulp, timber for construction, ship building, and matchwood.

Woods; 500-2000 m. Hebei, Heilongjiang, Jilin, Liaoning, Nei Mongol, Shaanxi [Japan, Korea, Russia]