Abies balsamea(L.) Mill.

balsam fir

WFO wfo-0000511004 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Abies balsamea, photographed by Mary E. Macaulay, P.Eng.
fig. a Mary E. Macaulay, P.Eng., CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-13 / obs. 205913010
Abies balsamea, photographed by Mary E. Macaulay, P.Eng.
fig. b Mary E. Macaulay, P.Eng., CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205967957
Abies balsamea, photographed by Mary E. Macaulay, P.Eng.
fig. c Mary E. Macaulay, P.Eng., CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205912462
Abies balsamea, photographed by Mary E. Macaulay, P.Eng.
fig. d Mary E. Macaulay, P.Eng., CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205966604
Abies balsamea, photographed by Mary E. Macaulay, P.Eng.
fig. e Mary E. Macaulay, P.Eng., CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205967846
Abies balsamea, photographed by Mary E. Macaulay, P.Eng.
fig. f Mary E. Macaulay, P.Eng., CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205913456
Abies balsamea, photographed by Mary E. Macaulay, P.Eng.
fig. g Mary E. Macaulay, P.Eng., CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205911753
Abies balsamea, photographed by Mary E. Macaulay, P.Eng.
fig. h Mary E. Macaulay, P.Eng., CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205966745

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Confused withby our own model

These are not lookalikes we guessed at. Each one is a species our identification model genuinely mistook for this plant, and how many times. The error rate is published.

Also published as 26 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Abies balsamea f. balsamea
  • Abies balsamea f. hudsonia (Bosc ex Jacques) Fernald & Weath.
  • Abies balsamea f. nana (J.Nelson) Beissn.
  • Abies balsamea f. phanerolepis (Fernald) Rehder
  • Abies balsamea subsp. phanerolepis (Fernald) A.E.Murray
  • Abies balsamea var. brachylepis Willk.
  • Abies balsamea var. longifolia Loudon
  • Abies balsamea var. macrocarpa A.H.Kent
  • Abies balsamea var. nana (J.Nelson) Carrière
  • Abies balsamifera Michx.
  • Abies fraseri var. hudsonia (Bosc ex Jacques) Carrière
  • Abies fraseri var. nana Lindl. & Gordon
  • Abies hudsonia Bosc ex Jacques
  • Abies intermedia Fulling
  • Abies minor Duhamel ex Gordon
  • Abies phanerolepis (Fernald) T.S.Liu
  • Peuce balsamea (L.) Rich.
  • Picea aromatica Carrière
  • Picea balsamea (L.) Loudon
  • Picea balsamea var. longifolia Loudon
  • Picea balsamea var. nana J.Nelson
  • Picea fraseri var. hudsonia (Bosc ex Jacques) Knight & Perry
  • Pinus abies var. balsamea (L.) Münchh.
  • Pinus balsamea L.

and 2 more.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice, no toxicity claim and no native range, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.