Choosing a Christmas Tree – Balsam and White Firs

The Balsam Fir is a beautiful dark-green colour with airy, flexible branches that may not be able to hold heavy ornaments as they will bend. It has an attractive form, holds its needles well if kept watered, and gives off a pleasant fragrance. Balsam fir is a medium-sized tree generally reaching forty to sixty feet in height in the wild. It is most like the traditional Christmas tree seen in illustrations as it has a dense, dark-green, pyramidal shape with a slender spire-like tip. The scientific name balsamea is an ancient word for the balsam tree, so named because of the many resinous blisters found on the bark.

White fir, also commonly called concolour fir, is native to the western United States and has just begun to appear as a Christmas tree in UK plantations. In the wild this tree can grow to one hundred and fifty feet in height and four feet in diameter and the oldest white firs reach three hundred and fifty years making this one of the longest lived true conifers and a habitat and food source for much of the western American wildlife. As a Christmas tree it produces a spire-like crown with a straight trunk. Needles are notched at the tip, and their bluish-green shade when young, turning dull green with age is what gives them their concolour tag. In the USA it is regularly grown as a cemetery tree as it contrasts with darker evergreens.

Balsam Fir photograph by Justin Russel, used under a creative commons attribution licence.