What plants would you like companies to make?

[Pachyrhinosaurus]

As an artist, it's kind of a challenging situation. I'd like to get into making plants but I'm not a fan of some of the really delicate materials such as cut-out paper or dried foliage. That leaves me with using cut up plastic plants or foam foliage. I thought about cutting ferns out of thin plastic sheets if I can find something appropriate, but I don't know how well I could execute that-- and leaves for a whole tree would be a serious undertaking if I wanted to do it that way.

[Halichoeres]

Calamites seems to be winner, but narrowly!

[Protopatch]

Is it the whole list, the top 3 or the "winner" that you'll be submitting to the companies ?

[Halichoeres]

I don't know! @Sim, how were you planning to do that?

[Sim]

I'll link companies to this thread where they can see all of the results.  I'm impressed by how many votes the plants have received!

[Halichoeres]

Thanks, Sim!

[Monkeysaurus]

I recently purchased some 1/35 fir trees for my late Cretaceous dinner table. I also got some sort of small palm like plant to stand in for cycads as well as ferns. I had to search quite a bit to find time appropriate flora. I would like to see anything that doesn't have a modern analogue.

[Halichoeres]

Those are nice! Were they made for train sets?

[Monkeysaurus]

@Halichoeres 

Not in particular however most of the other purchases from that Etsy site seem to be used as such. They're a store out of Italy that has the best fake trees and plants I've seen. They're not cheap but they do hold up to close scrutiny in person. They don't do anything prehistoric so I have to find close modern analogues to stand in for Cretaceous flora.

[Halichoeres]

Ah, thanks! Yeah, I can imagine there's a bigger audience for modern plants than for prehistoric ones.

[SBell]

OK, I'll be the one to say it. I wouldn't buy any of those. This is not because I don't like prehistoric plants - I very much do. It is not because I don't like the genera you listed - all perfectly lovely. It's because injection-molded plastic plants are unappealing. They look much less convincing than animals in the same medium, and much more like toddler-grade toys.

If any company offered plant figures that looked as much like plants as the better animal figures look like animals (and at a reasonable price point), I'd be first in line. But I've yet to see such a thing.

I'm hopeful that some clever maker will take advantage of the recent proliferation of 3D printers, laser cutters and engravers, and so on to manufacture some quality paleo-plants. It seems like a niche too small to attract the bigger companies, but a small-timer with low overhead could succeed, and perhaps open up a market for the bigger companies. And of course the same technologies would apply equally to modern flora, which there is probably much more demand for - I'm sure many dollhouse enthusiasts would love some nice to-scale rosebushes and fruit trees, for example.

There are definitely some 3d printables out there, some where the plants are modular to allow for varying heights and styles, as well as different base colours. Never gotten around to printing any, but it's been done