Trees to 20 m tall; bark grayish white, shallowly furrowed when mature; crown broadly ovate. Branchlets grayish or yellowish brown, green or brownish green and angled when young, terete; sprouts conspicuously angled. Buds yellowish red, conical, slender, viscid. Petiole terete, 1.5-5 cm, sometimes pubescent at apex; leaf blade rhombic-elliptic, rhombic-ovate-orbicular, ovate-orbicular, or ovate-lanceolate, 4-9 × 2-5 cm, broadest below middle, abaxially greenish white, adaxially dull green, glabrous, base cuneate, broadly cuneate, or rarely subrounded, margin alternating high and low serrate, ciliate, apex acuminate or shortly acuminate. Sprouts with petiole shorter; leaf blade larger, long elliptic, base suborbicular, margin crisped. Male catkin 5-8 cm. Female catkin 5.5-11 cm. Female flower: ovary globose or conical, glabrous; stigma 2-lobed. Capsule oblong, ca. 8 mm, 2- or 3-valved, subsessile, apex acuminate. Fl. Mar-Apr, fr. Apr-May(-Jun). 2n = 36*, 38*, 40*, 41*.

* Mountain slopes, valleys, along rivers; below 2300 m. Gansu, Hebei, Heilongjiang, Henan, Jilin, Liaoning, Nei Mongol, Qinghai, Shaanxi, Shanxi, Sichuan.