Mohave desert scenery: HO scale Yuccas and Joshua Trees

[NevinW]

Scenery Express is selling really nice O scale desert southwest plants including cactus, Yuccas, Octillos and Joshua Trees. They are clearly too big although I am thinking about cutting the branches and using them as HO trees. A search of Walthers didn't find anything. Are there any small companies out there making HO desert plants? - Nevin

[cacole]

Pegasus Hobbies, Montclair, CA, sells HO cactus "Museum Models" products; however, no respectable museum would use them as they come from the box because they're cast in very bright green, shiny plastic that requires a lot of work to look presentable.

[Southwest Chief]

I just went to the Scenic Express website and almost fell out of my chair.  Those desert plants are great.  While some are definitely done better then others, they all are pretty respectible. 

I think I might be bugging them with emails to get these into the HO market somehow.  Not sure who actually manufactures these desert plants, but I think they would do well if made in HO scale.

At a train show in Anaheim, California several years ago, a vendor had beautiful Joshua trees and palm trees in HO scale.  I think his Joshua trees look better then Scenic Express. 

He offered flowering and non flowering Joshua trees.  I bought a couple of both his non flowering Joshua trees and palm trees.  Oh how I wish I knew where to get more.  I seem to recall the man lived in Riverside, but I have been unable to find out more and he has not been to a local show since that one time.

I thought I had a better photo of the desert section of the layout showing the Joshua trees, but these are the best I could find:

And this is the best I could find showing some of the palm trees:

Oops almost forgot.  Plastruct makes some prickly pear cacti in HO scale.  They come in an awful bright green plastic color.  I painted mine with paints on hand.  The cactus part was painted PollyScale Depot Olive, while the little pears were painted with PollyScale Milwaukee Road Maroon.  No photos I have on hand, but if you'd like I can take some and post here.

[ereimer]

 Woodland Scenics has a desert plants kit , and a desert oasis diorama in their educational line

here's the plant kit (it's near the bottom of the page)

http://www.scenearama.com/items_accents.cfm/AccentKits

 

it looks like you get a decent amount of material for $9.99 , but i can't say anything about the quality since i haven't bought one yet . i've seen cactus castings for double the price of this whole kit so it's worth a look

 

ernie