Cactus and Joshua Trees

[nachoman]

the technique I use for making prickly pear cactus makes plants that are borderline too large for HO scale, so I doubt it could be adapted for N-scale. I haven't made any joshua trees or yuccas, but the technique I was considering (using material from the flower department at a craft store) would also be too large for N scale. Ocotillo plants could be made from a bundle of wires, and larger saguaros may be constructed by either carving basswood or deforming plastic sprues. I would suggest playing around with pipe cleaners for the joshua trees. Smaller cactus would almost be unnoticeable in n-scale.

There was an article in Model Railroader sometime in the early 1980s about making desert plants.
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://index.mrmag.com/tm.exe?opt=I&MAG=MR&MO=12&YR=1983&output=3&sort=A">http://index.mrmag.com/tm.exe?opt=I&MAG ... t=3&sort=A</a><!-- m -->
The article was re-published in a Kalmbach scenery book (probably out of print). I don't know if any of those techniques are adaptable to n-scale.