Great Smoky Mountains
Tennessee
May 2013
The upper altitudes of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park have a covering of a large spruce-fir forest. The Fraser fir is named after — this is too easy — John Fraser. He was a Scottish botanist in the 18th and 19th centuries who did some of his best work right here in the Smokies.
The Fraser fir is sometimes called the “balsam fir.” Some of these trees have a resin that can be milked from bark blisters. Now really, when you woke up this morning, did you imagine you would be reading about milking bark blisters? These trees are called she-balsam. The kind that cannot be milked? He-balsam. I am not making this up.
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