What’s the formula for preserving lichens for the use of trees?
Welcome to the forum.
If you get the lichen at Michaels or any craft store, it does not need further preserving. To pick lichen seems like a bad idea. The cost of preserving would be more than buying it.
Second, there are MANY ways to make better trees than lichen. Lichen makes an alternative bush and that’s about it.
Having said all that, diluted Matte Medium seems the best way to preserve anything. I have tried Polyurathan, White Glue and water based paint. Matte Medium works the best for me.
Commercially preserved lichen uses a glycerin/water mix to do the job, but I couldn’t tell you the proportions. The same treatment can be used to “freshen” lichen that has become “crispy”. [swg]
Wayne
I beg to differ…
[:-^]
Maybe these will help.
http://www.terragenesis.co.uk/infopages/page368.html
http://www.pc-technology.com/user/railroad/tips/lichen/
Looks like 3 parts water, one part glycerin.
Rotor
loather, you are about right. Those are better looking lichen trees than I can make. I am learning that there are as many ways to make trees as there are trees. That means are forests can have as much variety as the prototype.
That’s exactly how the wife and I do it. It works well. We pick our own lichen on our stone lots. We use it for midground trees, set onto simple painted wire “trunks” with glue. Then mist with diluted matte medium and sprinkle on some ground foam. For dense forest darker dye and lighter foam seem to work well in creating shades and shadows.
I have better photos but they are not yet on the web. [sigh]
This one shows mostly lichen trees mixed with supertrees in the foreground and a few bottle brush evergreens.
I agree, lichens make great scenery. Not sure where anyone ever got the notion that it isn’t one of the best scenery mediums around but when I moved to Georgia and realized the stuff grows all over the place down here I was really excited, and made a garden behind my patio out of it, installing foot-wide gravel paths, and my grown son’s left-behind Tonka road grader just for fun.
Before guests came over for BBQ I always sprayed it with a hose, then hit it with some spray-mist ant killers to REALLY liven up the green to a super-intense color. Everyone loved it.
I just found this post, searching for the right way to keep it soft with glycerin. FOUND IT! Yeah, I love MRRing with web help in my retiring years, so much BETTER than when we did it in our youth!!! Looking FORWARD to hitting the big 6-5 on 6/9/19 
since kick-starting my HO railroading hobby again after a 50 year hiatus last February. I opened an old box in the storage room and there was the Rivarossi 2-8-8-2 I bought in 1965 for $43.00! Tender missing, pilot broken off. Looked on Ebay for parts and discovered a whole new world of exciting train stuff on there and since then my roster has grown by leaps and bounds, and a new layout is taking shape. Can’t wait to put my home-grown, DIY processed lichens on the mountainsides! This is all just so cool. Thanks guys, keep the tips and help a-comin around the mountain when she comes, eh?
So I found a gallon of glycerin on Amazon Prime free delivery $15.50 for nearly a gallon. Printer ink can be had for $9 for five 100ml bottles, two black, one yellow one red one blue. I mixed ~10 ml blue with ~12 ml yellow with nearly a quart of water and dyed a medium sized baking pan full of finely sifted maple sawdust for some grass, when it is done drying on wax paper I will sift it again through a cheapo Walmart flour sifter.
Gotta wear gloves to work with the