When Gifford Pinchot was United States forester, a protest against the cutting of Christmas trees was formally laid before him. It was generally believed that he would declare that the waste ought to be stopped and would set his disapproval on the practice; but he did nothing of the sort. He declared that the forests are for the use of the people and that they can serve in no better way than by supplying every child in the land with a Christmas tree once a year.
The people who are acquainted with this interesting and somewhat rare tree have seen to it that it does not want for names. Some of these names are both definitive and descriptive, while others are neither. Tennessee, North Carolina, and West Virginia furnish the names. Within the tree’s range in Tennessee and North Carolina it is often known as balsam without any qualifying word, and that is quite sufficient, for no other fir or balsam grows within its range. In the same region it is called balsam fir. That is the common name of its northern relative, but there is little likelihood of confusing the two species, for their ranges do not overlap much, if they touch at all, which they probably do not. In Tennessee the name is reversed and instead of balsam fir it is fir balsam. It is likewise known as double fir balsam, but why “double” is added to the name is not clear. Similar mystery attaches to the name “single spruce,” which is applied to the balsam fir in the interior of British America. The southern Appalachian tree is called she balsam and she balsam fir. These names have no scientific basis, and they appear to have originated in a desire to distinguish this tree from the red spruce with which it is associated. The spruce is called “he balsam.” Artificial names like these are not necessary to distinguish red spruce from Fraser fir, as very slight acquaintance should enable anybody to tell one from the other at sight, and to see clearly that they are not of the same species. Mountain balsam, a North Carolina name for this fir, is well taken, for it is distinctly a mountain species. The name healing balsam is given in acknowledgment of the supposed medicinal properties of the resin which collects in blisters or pockets under the bark of young trees and near the tops of old. In West Virginia, where this tree reaches the northern limits of its habitat, it is called blister pine, on account of the resin pockets. In the same region it is called stackpole pine, because farmers who mow mountain meadows use straight, very light poles cut from this fir round which to build haystacks.