Javor klen

A mature lone tree for a waterside

Sturdy broadleaf trees that grow in floodplains and on damp meadows tend to have a massive trunk with pale patches where the bark has peeled, and a crown spread out to the sides. A tree like that is usually the dominant feature of a landscape: it stands alone in the middle of a pasture, by a ford or behind a farm building, and it tends to be older than most of the buildings around it.

What you get

The package holds a single tree 9.8 cm tall. It is finished and colored through, so after unpacking it is enough to prepare a hole in the terrain and seat it. It is the tallest of the ordinary broadleaf trees of this range, and so it suits anywhere a scene is to be given a clear vertical accent.

Working with a lone tree

A solitary tree carries more responsibility than a group, because the viewer will study it in detail. It therefore pays to give it some surroundings: a worn footpath, a length of fence leaning against the trunk, or a cluster of stones at its foot. If the scene shows summer, it suits the spot to suggest the shade under the crown with darker grass; the outline of that shade follows the shape of the crown, not a circle.

Given its height, the tree will serve beside buildings in the sizes HO and N, and equally on military dioramas where it is to suggest mature growth behind a vehicle. Taller grass is recommended around the foot of the trunk, as it makes the transition between base and tree disappear and the tree looks as though it really grew out of the terrain.

Before the final gluing it pays to turn the tree around its vertical axis several times and choose the view from which the crown has the best outline. With a single tree in a scene this small matter is noticed at once, because the viewer's eye has no other tree to compare it with.