Abies fraseri is a species of fir

Fir

Firs are a genus of 48–55 species of evergreen conifers in the family Pinaceae. They are found through much of North and Central America, Europe, Asia, and North Africa, occurring in mountains over most of the range...

 native to the mountains of the eastern United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

. It is closely related to Abies balsamea (balsam fir), of which it has occasionally been treated as a subspecies

Subspecies

Subspecies in biological classification, is either a taxonomic rank subordinate to species, ora taxonomic unit in that rank . A subspecies cannot be recognized in isolation: a species will either be recognized as having no subspecies at all or two or more, never just one...

 (as A. balsamea subsp. fraseri (Pursh) E.Murray) or a variety (as A. balsamea var. fraseri (Pursh) Spach).
The species is named after the Scottish botanist John Fraser

John Fraser (botanist)

John Fraser was a Scottish botanist, born at Tomnacross, the Aird, Inverness-shire. He moved to London, where he started work as a draper working with linen, but then, together with his son, took up botanical collecting, sending his collections to his plant nursery in London and to other clients,...

 (1750–1811), who made numerous botanical collections in the region.