It belongs to the Pinaceae Family, with the Latin name ofAbies ziyuanensis.
The evergreen arbor can grow up to 20 to 25 meters high, with a chest diameter of 40 to 90 centimeters. It has a gray bark that cracks into flaky pieces. The leaves come out on twigs and stretch both outward and upward, or into two irregular queues. Those below the twigs look like combs, about 2 to 4.8 centimeters long and 3 to 3.5 millimeters wide. Its oval cone shapes like a cylinder of 10 to 11 centimeters long, with a diameter of 4.2 to 4.5 centimeters wide. The cone turns dark green and brown when grown up. The oval seed is 1 centimeter long and in light brown. The color of the seed wing, in the shape of a triangle standing upside down, is light mauve black.
 |
|
Ziyuan Fir is native to the tropic mountainous region of Central Asia, where it's cool in summer and cold in winter, with abundant precipitation. It has a long snow period and ice period there, and it's cloudy and foggy all the year round, with little sunlight. The pH value of the acidic yellow brown earth there is 4.5 to 5. It is mainly sparsely distributed in mixed forests of conifers and broadleaf trees, standing tall and erect with crowns higher than that of the broadleaf trees. Young trees are shade-resistant, but the grown-up ones need proper sunlight. The florescence lasts from April to May, and the cones ripen in October. There is a plastochrone in fructification.
It is found only in Ziyuan County, northeast part of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region and two counties in the southwest of Hunan Province. Not only the quantity of Ziyuan Fir is small but also most of them are over-matured, so they're in need of timely protection.
Email to Friends
Print
Save