Making Model Palm Trees

Palm Trees
Model palm trees are essential for colonial-era wargaming, but they can be difficult to come by. Architectural model companies sell them at unbelievably high prices, and model railroad hobby shops sometimes carry these, but it is not too difficult to make your own at very reasonable cost. In addition, plastic palm trees of varying quality are carried in toy stores at irregular intervals, usually as part of dinosaur-theme playsets. If you see a set with good-looking palms, buy it -- you can't count on its being available next year, or even next month. You can give the dinosaurs to your nephews and nieces, or save them for a game in which the detachment of the Queen's troops finds its way into the sealed valley where prehistoric creatures have miraculously survived.

General instructions for making model palms are given at the bottom of this page.
The following sections illustrate palms made by David, with various methods.

Palm Trees from Plastic Fern
The best looking homemade palms have fronds made from plastic decorator ferns. Clip the fronds off the fern, and bend into a curve if necessary. Use a hot-glue gun to attach the fronds to the top of the trunk.

Plastic ferns can be hard to find today, having been largely supplanted by silk. Garage sales are a good source and the prices are very low, but they require a lot of time. Inexpensive craft stores or the craft departments of dollar stores and discount stores may still carry plastic ferns from time to time. Your own or your parents' attic or basement might be an overlooked source also.
Size comparison figure is a large 25

Palm Trees from Silk Fern
These trees have fronds made from silk artificial "leatherleaf" fern. These particular fern fronds from a national craft chain store are embossed with ridges that give a good appearance. Clip the fronds off the fern, turn them over, and use a hot-glue gun to attach them to the top of the trunk.

One disadvantage of this method is that the fold in the fronds makes it nearly impossible to take a curve. The fronds tend to stick straight out, as if the palm were having a bad hair day. Still, silk-fern palms can look very effective from tabletop level, and even better from above.
Size comparison figures are large 25s

Feather-frond Palm Trees
These are the first palms I built, and my cat's favorite toys, so there are only these two left, and they're looking a little sparse. The tops are made of green-dyed feathers, bought in a baggie from a craft superstore. The feathers are cut to a frondlike shape with scissors, and can be curved by pinching the central spine in several places between your thumbnail and the pad of your index finger. Although the delicacy of the feather fibers is attractive, the fronds still look a bit stiff. The general appearance is quite acceptable, especially if you dislike the solid look of the artificial-fern palms.
Figures are small Ral Partha 25s

Marx Palm Trees
These are plastic palms first produced by Louis Marx & Co. in the 'Fifties for their fondly-remembered Prehistoric Times, Captain Gallant, and Zorro playsets. Though Marx is defunct, the dies (production molds) for these trees still exist, and the palms pop up in playsets and inexpensive baggie toy sets from time to time. They are also available from The Toy Soldier Company.

Like many Marx playset components, the trees are not strictly realistic, but are so appealingly designed that the viewer doesn't notice or doesn't care. The trunks are not round, but flattened to save plastic, and the simple green tops snap on.

These examples have been sprayed with light gray primer and painted and drybrushed with acrylics. Figures are mixed-size 25s.

There are later Marx plastic palms, used in the Noah's Ark and other small sized playsets from the 'Sixties. They look fairly good, though they are tall and the trunk banding is very mechanical. I found these at a garage sale and painted them before learning that they are collector's items these days.

Pressman Pirate Battle Game Palm Trees
These small, but attractive, plastic palms are part of Pressman's playset-like Pirate Battle Game. They are made to plug into the game's islands, so new bases must be made for them. Simple bases of cereal-box cardboard or clear acetate with elliptical holes allow the trees to be removed for compact storage or portability; the tops already pop on and off .

The trees at left have been painted and highlighted with craft acrylic paints. The greenery at their bases is on separate stands, and is made with odds and ends of plastic and dried plants.

The Pirate Battle set is no longer available (but it appears on e-Bay regularly). At one time, the palms could be ordered separately for an astounding US$1.25 for 6 double-trees, but as of March 2001, Pressman reports that they are no longer available. Truly sad.

Figures are large 25s.

Miscellaneous Plastic Palm Trees
Plastic palms can be found in odd places. These are often undersized for 25mm figures, but are usually inexpensive.

At left and right are plastic trees from a supermarket bakery counter. Cake-decoration palms have a point instead of a base. You can poke them into soft scenery (like this cork) or fabricate bases for them easily. Sugarcraft sells similar trees in bulk.

In the middle is a set of flat plastic palms from a dollhouse/miniatures store. They appear to be fairly close copies of the old Britains metal date palms.When placed at the edge of the table, their small size and 2-D fronds give an illusion of distance and visually break the abruptness of the table edge.

Behind, are plastic grasses from a dinosaur baggie toy set.
Figures are Partha small 25s

These impressive palms were bought at a specialized cake decoration store. The soft plastic trunks are so flexible that it is questionable whether they would hold paint. They also bend easily and overbalance the small base. Perhaps they're meant to be held down by icing. This set has been glued to a wider cardboard base. Probably the giant coconuts should be clipped off.

Figures are Foundry large 25s

Making Model Palm Trees
Palm Anatomy Palms have a slender trunk which often shows the growth history of the tree, either by banding or by structures like thick inverted scales. The trunk often tapers gradually upward and the base flares out at ground level. The head of a palm contains fronds which sprout upward from the top of the trunk. As they grow larger they rotate downward, finally dying and forming a bulge of dead frond material just under the living head.

The Trunk Trunks can be made from dowels, chucked into a variable speed electric drill and roughly turned to a taper with a coarse file at low speed. Take light cuts and wear eye protection. Banding can be added with the file corner as the trunk is turned. A hand drill clamped in a vise is slower than an electric drill but works. If no drill is available, a balsa stick, whittled to a round shape and tapered with a sharp modeler's knife, can be used instead of a dowel. Balsa trunks will be considerably more fragile, however.

Gently bend the trunk into a slight curve. Sometimes hot water or steam can help this process (CAUTION: steam can cause serious burns). To add weight for stability, hot-glue the trunk to a nickel, and glue the coin to a wider base of thin material. Putty or spackling paste can be added to disguise the coin, but painting a splotchy camouflage ground-pattern works almost as well. Putty can also form the flare at the bottom of the trunk and the bundle of dead fronds at the top. Texture the frond bundle with a knife blade. Paint the trunk light grey, with a wash of darker grey or brown, and perhaps a highlight of lighter grey.

Patrick Wilson, of By Jingo!, uses 18-gauge florist wire for palm trunks. It has rough textured light-brown paper wrapping, is easily bent and cut, and is inexpensive. Patrick uses it with the cake-decorator palm tops, and the result looks quite good and is almost effortless. It can be a bit difficult to find. Some florist and craft stores carry it; Wal-Mart's craft department used to stock it, but I haven't seen it there for some time.

Tim Peterson, of Gisby's Page, has come up with an ingenious way to get the banded trunk: make the trunk out of coat-hanger or other heavy wire, curve it, and wrap it with string or twine and soak with white glue. He uses the very inexpensive cake-decoration palms for the fronds and builds new, taller trunks for them quickly and at almost no cost. Brilliant!

The Fronds The sections above show palms made with various materials for the fronds. If possible, give the fronds a slight curve downward. Use a hot glue gun to attach the fronds to the trunk, remembering to start with the largest fronds at the bottom, hanging downward, and progressing to medium fronds, more or less horizontal, and finishing with the small fronds pointing upward at an angle.

One frond material not illustrated here is paper. A classic technique for people with patience is to fold green construction paper and cut half-ovals of various sizes against the fold with a sharp knife. Unfold the frond and make many angling cuts, reaching almost to the fold. If you plan to paint the fronds, water-based paint may create a problem; run a test before gluing. Curve the frond, and glue to the trunk.

Preserving Model Palm Trees Store them where the cat can't find them.

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