Picea purpurea

Masters 1906

Common names

紫果云杉 ziguo yunshan [Chinese]

Taxonomic notes

Syn: P. likiangensis (Franchet) E. Pritzel var. purpurea (Masters) Dallimore et Jackson 1923 (Farjon 1998).

Description

Trees to 50 m tall and 100 cm dbh, with a pyramidal crown. Bark dark gray and scaly. Branchlets yellow, graying with age, densely pubescent. Leaves spreading radially, or closely appressed forward on upper side of branchlets, spreading on lower side, straight or slightly curved, flattened-rhombic in cross section, 7-12×1.5-1.8 mm, with stomatal lines 4-6 along the lower surface, apex variable. Seed cones reddish to very dark purple, ellipsoid, 2.5-4(-6)×1.7-3 cm. Seed scales loosely arranged, rhombic-ovate, 13-.6×13 mm, papery, undulate, erose-denticulate. Seeds ca. 9 mm including brown, purple-spotted wing. Cotyledons 5-7, 10-13 mm. Pollination April, seed maturity October (Wu and Raven 1999).

Distribution and Ecology

China: S Gansu, E Qinghai, NW Sichuan; at 2600-3800 m elevation (Farjon 1998, Wu and Raven 1999). Hardy to Zone 5 (cold hardiness limit between -28.8°C and -23.3°C) (Bannister and Neuner 2001).

Remarkable Specimens

The oldest reported living tree was 282 years old (195 years of which were crossdated) in 2018, growing on Taizishan in Gansu at 2700 m elevation. This sampling was part of a dendroclimatic analysis that found Picea purpurea growing near its upper elevation limits is strongly sensitive to summer temperatures (Ren et al. 2014).

Ethnobotany

Observations

Remarks

The epithet refers to the purple color of the seed cones.

Citations

Masters, M. T. 1906. On the conifers of China. Journal of the Linnaean Society, Botany 37:410-424 (p. 418). Available: Biodiversity Heritage Library, accessed 2021.12.18.

Ren Junli, Liu Yu, Song Huiming, Ma Yongyong, Li Qiang, Wang Yanchao, and Cai Qiufang. The historical reconstruction of the maximum temperature over the past 195 years, Linxia region, Gansu Province--Based on the data from Picea purpurea Mast. Quaternary Sciences 34(6):1270-1279.

See also

The species account at Threatened Conifers of the World.