Christmas tree pests and weeds of different pests, most of which cause cosmetic damage to the trees, important in the Christmas tree industry. The balsam woolly adelgid ("Adelges picae") are small soft-bodied insects which attack the Fraser fir. The insects appear as white, woolly spots on the tree and are fatal to the fir if left untreated. The woolly adeligid was native to central Europe where it affected the silver fir; it was introduced to the United States, where it has no known native predators, before 1900. Balsam twig aphids ("Mindarus abietnus") are another type of tree pest which affects fir and spruce trees in
Claud Lovat Fraser Theatre in Haymarket. Tree in turn, at MacFall’s instigation, commissioned him to supply the illustrations for "Thoughts and Afterthoughts", his volume of reminiscences and also gave him free run of his private suite in the theatre’s dome; Fraser began to get to know theatre people, and they him. However Tree subsequently declined, in January 1914, a proposed theatre piece "The Three Students" written by MacFall with designs by Fraser. In 1913, along with Holbrook Jackson and the poet Ralph Hodgson, Lovat Fraser established a small publishing firm called "The Sign of the Flying Fame" to produce decorative poetry broadsides and