Recognition characters: Plant: Large tree, up to 50 m tall, with cylindrical profile and straight, cylindrical stem, with branches in regularly layered vertices, arranged horizontally. Bark gray-green, smooth in youth, with gray rhytidoma, having polygonal scales at an older age. The leaves arranged pectinally, in two rows, are acicular, flattened, and after falling they leave circular, smooth scars. The flowers are unisexual, the female ones arranged in erect, cylindrical cones, 10-20 cm long, brown-rotietic; the male ones grouped in thick yellow catkins.
