On the mountains of western North Carolina fir grows in mixture with red spruce. Sometimes the fir is fifty per cent of the stand, but usually it is less, and frequently not more than fifteen per cent. Few fir trees in that locality are two feet in diameter. They grow with fair rapidity in their early years, but decline in rate as age comes on. It may be observed in traveling through the stands of mixed spruce and fir among the high ranges of the southern Appalachian mountains that the proportion of spruce is much higher in old stands than in young. That is due to the greater age to which spruce lives. Trees of that species continue to stand after the firs have died of old age. On the other hand, fir outnumbers spruce in many young stands. That is because fir reproduces better than spruce, and grows with more vigor at first. In stands of second growth the fir often predominates. It depends to some extent upon the conditions under which the second growth has its start. Fir does not germinate well if the ground has been bared by fire and the humus burned. Consequently, old burns do not readily grow up in fir. The best stands occur where the natural conditions have not been much disturbed further than by removing the growth. Fortunately conditions on the summit and elevated slopes of the southern Appalachians do not favor destructive forest fires. Rain is frequent and abundant, and the shade cast by evergreen trees keeps the humus too moist for fire. To this condition is due the comparative immunity from fire of the high mountain forests of fir and spruce. Sometimes, however, fires sweep through fine stands with disastrous results. The destruction is more serious because no second forest of evergreens is likely on tracts which have been severely burned.
A report by the State Geological Survey on forest conditions in western North Carolina, issued in 1911, predicted that spruce and fir forests aggregating from 100,000 to 150,000 acres among the high mountain ranges, will become barren tracts, because of the destructive effect of fires stripping the ground of humus.
The cutters of pulpwood in the southern Appalachian mountains take Fraser fir wherever they find it, mix it with spruce, and the two woods go to market as one. Statistics show the annual cut of both, but do not give them separately. The output of spruce, including fir, south of Pennsylvania, in 1910 was 115,993 cords, equivalent to about 80,000,000 feet, board measure. Most of it was red spruce, but some was fir, and in North Carolina probably twenty-five per cent was of that species. The total pulpwood cut in that state was 14,509 cords of the two woods combined, and probably 3,800 cords were Fraser fir.