Realistic-looking artificial silk trees and plants are a wonderful addition to your home or office décor. "Faux" trees and plants are available in an assortment of sizes and styles and varying levels of quality. Do a little research before you buy and you’ll learn a few things about what to look for in a silk and/or artificial tree. Just for starters, here are a few notes on what makes for high quality trees and plants:
Do they look realistic!? Many higher end products will have real tree bark on their trunks and a few roots popping out the top of the “dirt”.
Leaves will also vary in tones and branches will be irregular, like real trees, and not perfectly straight and uniform.
Leaf counts for trees vary but, as a guideline Palm Trees should have at least 650 leaves, Ficus trees should have no less than 800 leaves, and specialty trees like Arelixas will have more than 2000 leaves. As a rule-of-thumb: the more leaves, the better!
Also look for more than 4 visible stalks or branches. If the silk tree or plant is small or less than 4 feet, less stalks may look okay. For larger plants and silk trees look for at least 5 visible stalks and/or branches for a realistic look and feel. However, keep in mind some species grow “clumped” together so you may have 3 stems close together with only 2 stalks each, so the description of the plant may note only 3 stems instead of the visible 6 that are actually there.
