Picea crassifolia
Sponsor
Kindly sponsored by
Sir Henry Angest
Credits
Tom Christian (2025)
Recommended citation
Christian, T. (2025), 'Picea crassifolia' from the website Trees and Shrubs Online (treesandshrubsonline.
Common Names
- Qinghai Spruce
- 青海云杉 (qing hai yun shan)
Other taxa in genus
- Picea abies
- Picea × albertiana
- Picea alcoquiana
- Picea asperata
- Picea asperata aggregate
- Picea brachytyla
- Picea breweriana
- Picea chihuahuana
- Picea engelmannii
- Picea farreri
- Picea × fennica
- Picea glauca
- Picea glehnii
- Picea jezoensis
- Picea koraiensis
- Picea koyamae
- Picea likiangensis
- Picea likiangensis aggregate
- Picea linzhiensis
- Picea × lutzii
- Picea mariana
- Picea × mariorika
- Picea martinezii
- Picea maximowiczii
- Picea mexicana
- Picea meyeri
- Picea morrisonicola
- Picea neoveitchii
- Picea obovata
- Picea omorika
- Picea orientalis
- Picea polita
- Picea pungens
- Picea purpurea
- Picea rubens
- Picea × saaghii
- Picea schrenkiana
- Picea sitchensis
- Picea smithiana
- Picea spinulosa
- Picea wilsonii
Tree to 20–25 m tall, to 1.2 m dbh. Bark orange-brown, smooth then flaking in young trees, becoming red-brown, rough and scaly in older trees. Crown narrowly pyramidal to conical, rather open in mature trees. First order branches short, spreading horizontally with assurgent tips; second order branches short, stiff, spreading or ascending. Branchlets short, stiff, leading shoots stout, pale orange-yellow or greyish, often pruinose, prominently ridged and grooved, glabrous or with scattered pubescence; pulvini large, 2–2.5 mm, erect or recurved. Vegetative buds ovoid-globose, more conical on leading shoots, to 8–12 × 6–10 mm, not or slightly resinous; bud scales triangular, tips more or less acute, keeled, margins erose, orange-brown, often pruinose, persistent for several years. Leaves* crowded, assurgent, those above shoot swept forward, those below shoot curving upward, rigid, (9–)12–22(–25) × 1.5–2.5(–3) mm, base abruptly tapering to truncate, linear, curved or nearly straight, more or less rhombic in cross section, keeled on two sides, apex obtuse-acute; amphistomatic, stomata in 4 bands; leaf colour bright green, with two whitish stomatal bands. Pollen cones 1–1.5 cm. Seed cones ovoid-oblong or cylindrical, sessile, apex obtuse, (5–)7–11 × 2.5–3.5 cm, purplish red at first, maturing green then brown. Seed scales broadly obovate-flabellate, 1.5–2 × 1–1.7 cm at mid cone, smooth, finely striated, glabrous, upper margin entire, slightly incurved, base cuneate. Bracts ligulate, 2 mm, entirely included. Seeds ovoid-oblong, 3–3.5 mm long, brown; seed wings ovate-oblong, 10–13 × 4–5 mm, orange-brown. (Farjon 2017; Grimshaw & Bayton 2009).
* When grown in Western Europe, P. crassifolia develops longer, flatter leaves than found in wild material (Grimshaw & Bayton 2009).
Distribution China Gansu, Nei Mongol (Daqing Shan), Ningxia (Helan Shan), Shaanxi, Qinghai (Qilian Shan)
Habitat Montane forests, mostly on north facing slopes at 1500–3800 m asl. The climate is strongly continental and rather dry, with long, cold winters and most precipitation falling as snow. It forms almost pure stands in certain places but occurs locally with other conifers, e.g. Pinus tabuliformis and Juniperus rigida at low elevations in Ningxia, where at higher elevations it occurs with Caragana and Potentilla spp..
USDA Hardiness Zone 5
RHS Hardiness Rating H7
Conservation status Least concern (LC)
Picea crassifolia is closely related to P. asperata, P. koraiensis and P. meyeri. This is a poorly understood species group distributed across a large part of western and northern China, from western Sichuan to where the borders of China, North Korea and Russia all meet. It is introduced in the article ‘Picea asperata aggregate’.
Populations to which the name Picea crassifolia is applied largely lie to the north of the range of P. asperata, in eastern Qinghai, southern Gansu, Ningxia and Shaanxi, but there is a considerable area of overlap (Fu, Li & Mill 1999; Debreczy & Rácz 2011). As outlined in the introductory article, P. asperata was the first of these names to be published, in 1906. P. crassifolia would not be described until 1923, by which time it had already been introduced to western cultivation as P. asperata. These two species are perhaps more alike than any other pairing in this complex, which no doubt helps to explain why this name took so long to achieve widespread use, let alone acceptance. Avoidance quickly became the standard coping mechanism, with no mention of P. crassifolia appearing in the entire Proceedings of the 1931 RHS Conifer Conference (Chittenden 1932) nor in the first impressions of Dallimore & Jackson’s Manual of the Coniferae (Dallimore & Jackson 1966). The late Alan Mitchell makes no mention of it in his treatise Conifers In the British Isles (Mitchell 1972) and even in the early 21st century this name is only rarely encountered in collections and literature, such that it was deemed to merit a brief account in New Trees (Grimshaw & Bayton 2009).
A century of confusion makes it hard to be confident in the identification of the (few) trees in collections labelled Picea crassifolia. The group of five trees from Qinghai at Dawyck Botanic Garden, UK, mentioned in New Trees, are still there and are genuine (of P. asperata, P. meyeri and P. crassifolia, only the latter is recorded in Qinghai – Farjon 2017; Fu, Li & Mill 1999): in 2006 the best was 2.5 m tall (Grimshaw & Bayton 2009) and in late 2024 c. 6 m tall × 18 cm diameter (at 1.6 m, measured to avoid a whorl of branches – pers. obs.).
The most obvious and consistent difference between these trees and others labelled Picea asperata is the bark. In P. asperata the bark characteristically breaks into irregular, large, rather thick plates; only P. koyamae of Japan is at all similar, but in P. crassifolia the bark breaks into irregular, small, thin flakes. Whilst this character helps to separate P. crassifolia and P. asperata it is of no use distinguishing P. crassifolia from P. meyeri, which has almost identical bark; P. koraiensis bark can also be very similar, but in most cultivated trees is somewhat smoother (pers. obs.).
