Balsam Fir Christmas trees

Balsam is the smell people mean when they say a room smells like Christmas. Only Canaan, a balsam variety itself, comes close, and it keeps going for weeks rather than days.

It is native to Minnesota, so it grows here without being coaxed, and it looks the part: dark green on top, silver underneath, with layered open branching that leaves each ornament hanging in its own space.

The trade is needle retention. Balsam holds well, just not as long as Fraser, and the branches are a little softer, so the heaviest ornaments are better on a Fraser or a spruce.

If you put the tree up in early December rather than late November, that trade costs you nothing at all.