The crown is a highly distinctive vase-shape, with a short broad trunk dividing low down into numerous nearly erect branches.

The flowers are inconspicuous and greenish, with no petals, and are wind-pollinated.

It is grown as an ornamental tree in Europe (huge exemplars of it can be found quite often in the western Georgian province of Imereti, used for decorating courtyards in villages and providing pleasant shade) and more rarely in North America (where the related Japanese Z. serrata is more popular).

The two main population centres of Z. carpinifolia are in the Hyrcanian forest of southern Azerbaijan and northern Iran, and the Colchic forest of western Georgia.

Other isolated stands can be found in the Karabakh mountains, Anatolia, northwestern and eastern Georgia, and Iranian Kurdistan.