Stands of wild balsam fir trees grow naturally inside a huge triangle, defined by Alberta on the western corner, Newfoundland to the north east, and New York State to the south. Some stands can be found farther north in protected valleys near Ungava Bay, and south in the mountains of Virginia. The species is common throughout the Maritimes, and especially on the Cape Breton uplands where thousands of acres of almost pure stands grow.

Yet, despite this huge natural range of the Balsam Fir, Nova Scotia's Christmas Tree growers today produce more than a third of Canada's Christmas Trees - harvesting nealry two million trees annually, and exporting most of them to the "Boston States" and further south and west.

Lunenburg County has declared itself be the Forestry Capital of Canada in 1996 - and the Balsam Fir Capital of the World - in part because it ships yearly about 1,200 tractor-trailer loads of trees to the USA, most of them balsam fir, most of them from carefully cultivated plantations.

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