A deciduous conifer dropping its needles in winter. They form a distinctive, tall, narrow, conical shape if growing alone but often grown in straight rows in plantations. Native to the mountains in central and east Europe but long established in Britain as a timber species and occasionally as an ornamental tree in gardens like this one found in a formal garden in Plattfields Park in Fallowfield.
The branches are mostly horizontal but lower branches on older trees can be slightly drooping.
The bark is rough, greyish brown in young trees becoming fissured with age. It can be used for tanning leather.
The needles grow up to 3cm long in tight bunches of up to 40. Fresh and green when first open becomeing darker with 2 pale bands before summer and changing red-yellow before falling in autumn.
Male flowers small. yellow, soft cones, realising pollen in spring. Female cones red in spring, maturing and becoming woody, brown and ovoid. Cones ripen in first year but persist onto twigs after seeds released. The common Crossbill favours these seeds and has a bill adapted to parting the cone scales to get to the seeds.
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