Read an article in N-Scale magazine showing excellent scratch-made trees using armatures of a dried plant call seddum, or Red Seddum. Does anyone know of a source for this material other than growing your own? Do craft stores have it? Do you have other weed or plant stems that you use for this purpose? Thanks for your input. GLenn
When I used sedum for my first layout I just cut it from my garden in the fall. Since I model in HO I just used the stems the way they are and added WS ground foam. The trees tended to look like trees on the Serengeti desert. You know, the flat top kind that only giraffes and elephants could reach? The most effective use I’ve seen of sedum is when someone uses florists tape to combine a few stalks to look like a fuller tree. As for where to find it other than the garden, I have no idea. I’ve since switched to scenic express super trees and never looked back. Good luck with whatever you do.
woodland scenics canopy tree kit is sedum
As said earlier sedum is a garden plant.
In the fall it blooms and dies back to the ground. After it blooms is when you harvest it and let it dry out before making trees.
Right now the roots are sending up new growth and this would be a good time to plant some for next fall. Might even score some points with the better half.
In the mean time check with your neighbors. If they have any they will be glad to get rid of the dead stalks in the Fall.
Bob
At the risk of starting the flame wars all over again…
I have about a dozen sedum plants in my garden. You have to be a little careful just going to a garden center looking for “sedum”, because there are a couple of dozen plants in this general family. Some are called stonecrop, but these aren’t the ones you want.
The kind you need has flowers that look like this:
I let mine dry on the plant in the fall, then harvest them in early November.
Now, if you were to use this as is to make a tree, it would be a little, well, odd looking – like the fiscus (Serengeti) trees mentioned above. What you do is take a sharp pair of scissors, or a sprue nipper, and trim the florets off of the top, and shape the side branches. I have also glued parts of several stalks together and used Sculpy (a self-curing modelling clay) to blend the stems into a uniform trunk.
Next, I spray paint them using an airbrush and my own blend of “tree bark” paint – 6 drops of neutral gray, two of medium brown, and one of light green. If you only used one stalk, this step isn’t necessary, but you should soak it in dilute matte medium to preserve it.
I then add green or brown poly fiber and ground foam, and voila – tree.
Note that solo trees, which have little or no competition for sunlight, tend to grow in more of a lollipop shape. Trees that are (or were, until a railroad cut a path through the forest) part of a forest canopy actually grow in the more or less Y shape pictured above. Shape your trees appropriately.
Assuming the deer don’t eat it this year (as they sometimes do), I can send you a bunch in the fall.
I think the variety you want is Sedum Spectabile.
Steve S
Thanks for these detailed and helpful replies. Do craft shops possibly carry these in dried form, I don’t want to wait for the buy-plant-grow-harvest cycle before I populate my forest. Glenn
One possible alternative would be cutting from dead Azalea bushes (or similar woody, branched shrubs). You might find these at plant nurseries, or a friend/neighbor’s yard. The below images are close-ups of my spring trimming efforts.
!(http://home.comcast.net/~docinct/CTRiverValleyRR/modelrailroader/two trees.jpg)
!(http://home.comcast.net/~docinct/CTRiverValleyRR/modelrailroader/tree bark.jpg)!(http://home.comcast.net/~docinct/CTRiverValleyRR/modelrailroader/branched tree.jpg)
!(http://home.comcast.net/~docinct/CTRiverValleyRR/modelrailroader/2ft diameter tree.jpg)