‘Tis the season to celebrate the balsam fir! This wonderful tree is the superlative holiday choice—the sweetest, softest, greenest, and most nostalgic option. Plus, it’s the highest growing evergreen in the Northeast.
Balsam firs are native to the northeastern U. S., growing from Maine to Minnesota, and across eastern Canada. North Woods mountain hikers recognize elevation gain where hardwood forests give way to red spruce and fir stands at around 3,500 feet. Hattie Freeman noted this forest change on the trail to the Perch in July 1902.
These evergreen “boreal” forests are cool, wet, and fragrant. Balsam firs have oblong blisters on their trunks filled with aromatic resin, a concentrated perfume of their crushed needles. This wonderful smell welcomed overnight guests at J. R. Edmands’s camps on Mt. Adams, where balsam boughs were piled for bedding.
On major northeastern peaks, balsam firs gain dominance as trees grow shorter in the krummholz zone around 4,500 feet. High winds and cold temperatures here inhibit growth, forcing trees into tangled impenetrable thickets that early AMC hikers called “scrub.”
The shorter trees give a glimpse of their reproductive structures, usually far overhead in lower forests. Here, in June, upright female cones are forming mid-branch above clusters of pollen-producing male cones.
At treeline, balsam firs are reduced to dwarf-size, sometimes no more than inches tall, growing as prostrate mats. Any upright growth is killed off by winter ice and wind.
Krummholz trees grow VERY slowly in extreme mountain conditions. This cross-section of balsam fir from Mt. Washington shows over 110 annual growth rings in a trunk only 2.75 inches across.
Some balsam firs find sheltered spots above treeline to hunker down. Here at almost 6,000 feet on Mt. Washington, is a wind-pruned globe of balsam fir—the highest Christmas tree in the Northeast. Likely here when Hattie Freeman passed by in 1902, who knows how many New Year’s Eves it has celebrated?
–Allison W. Bell