Fall Maple

A maple in its fall dress

In North America maples are planted on purpose: they line the streets of residential districts, shade the lawns in front of houses and grow in cemetery parks. They are prized mainly for the color the crown takes on in fall, when over a few days the leaves turn from dark green to yellow, orange and deep red. That is precisely the moment this pair captures.

Box contents

Two trees are supplied, the taller one around 7.6 cm, the lower one around 6 cm. They arrive finished and painted, so they can be placed into a scene straight out of the packaging; there is nothing to glue and no later toning to do.

How to work with them in a scene

A fall crown works as an accent of color, and so it deserves a place where the viewer looks first: by the fence of a front garden, at the entrance to a yard, or behind a park bench. The contrast with green trees also looks good, with a fall maple catching the eye at once among them. If you are building a scene set in late October, add fallen leaves in the same color range under the crown so that the transition between tree and terrain is not abrupt.

The size chosen suits buildings in HO and N and will also serve as a medium tree in larger scenes, where it is to form the second plane behind a vehicle or a building. When arranging it, the rule that helps is that a broadleaf tree by a house never stands exactly on the axis of the entrance but off to one side, so that the view of the facade is left clear.

A fall scene also takes a combination of both supplied sizes in one group. The taller tree then reads as an older specimen and the lower one as a younger planting added later, which matches the way avenues in residential streets came about step by step.