Preserving all natural trees

[WitchfinderGeneral]

Question to the tree spacialists here:
1. What plant is this?
2. Is there a way to preserve it's current look?

Those were growing on the pathway of a friends garden. I guess some kind of weed, smells a bit like cress. They were looking exactly like this, I just sticked them to a foam board. Maybe they need a cut but apart from that I like their look.

[FramFramson]

Wow! Hope someone has a good answer. I'd love a few of those on my tabletop, but of course if they quickly turn into brown sticks that's not going to work very well.

[S J Donovan]

We sell a plastic tree that looks like the green portion of the weed it is here
http://recreationalconflict.lusagi.com/plastics/trees/full/4intreebased.jpg
I am sure someone in the EU or Canada must sell them.

[nic-e]

Hang it up in a dry warm place to dry out, then LIGHTLY spray it with hairspray , let that set, then give it a dip in thinned pva.once that's dried, matt varnish and spray paint.

[sundayhero]

Take a look on flower craft hobbies. I believe they use glycerin to dry flowers. Basically, they put the flower into a glass of glycerin, and the flower "drink" it. It keeps the natural living aspect, but the flower is dry.

I don't know if it can be used for your needs, but it cost nothing googling it

[Legion1963]

Indeed. Excellent trees. Although i have never done it i am too thinking along the lines of a gentle air-dry and then a light spray with something adhesive like hairspray or glue. Then perhaps some application of paint and finally some varnish. 

[nic-e]

It's the method we used in college to preserve plants for still life work, seems to work well for delicate plants as they lasted us a good couple of years.admittedly we weren't  moving them all the time but they still fell over every now and then and were fine.i think a few light sprays with an airbrush should stop them falling apart while you colour them. 

[WitchfinderGeneral]

Thanks for the replies so far!

I put some of them in a mix of 2 parts water and 1 part glycerin. After 2 weeks the water in the plants should have been replaced by the glycerin. 250ml of glycerin set me back 5,50Euro at the local pharmacy. Of course it's cheaper in larger containers or when you buy online but I didn't want to wait any longer or invest much more.

Here's a shot of the vases/stands I tackeds together:


2 other plants are going to be dried the usual way and then I'll try the hairspray/pva/paint/varnish method.

[FramFramson]

Science!