So far I've scratchbuilt most of my stuff in my 2 jungle dios coz of the difficulty and costs of obtaining suitable scale materials over here. So being in a tropical country I experimented with preserving stuff.
The bananas shown below are scratchbuilt based on an excellent idea given by one of the guys here (under Flora/Fauna section entitled Banannas if I'm not mistaken) with slight modification on the leaves. I'm using it on my Drug runner Colombian jungle dio which I will hopefully get some photos in my gallery this weekend.
Besides wild bananas, secondary jungles have a fair bit of tall grasses which you can simulate with brush hair and coconut hemp. I have some shots of those in my gallery under my swamp dio.
Ferns which are very common in jungles can sometimes be done with material you get from dried flower material. I've used real ferns preserved with glycerin, the easiest I've found to preserve. I've worked with aquarium plants and usually they're a bit off the scale and you have to hide their plastic joints.
Coconuts and jungle palms whose leaves are time consuming to build can also be scratchbuilt. There's 2 articles here, one under Flora/Fauna and another under Features (Diorama). Sorry I didn't look for the links. I've a scratchbuilt coconut pic too in my forum but it needs more leaves.
Secondary or disturbed jungles are the hardest to build as the sparser tree canopies allow a LOT of variety and amount of groundcover to grow. Virgin jungles have minimal light penetration thus limiting the amount and variety of ground cover to shade tolerant plants like ferns.
Here's a link with lots of photos of tropical jungles. Its in Australia but they give you a rough idea what you need to replicate.
[url=http://www.gu.edu.au/text/ins/collections/webb/types.html[/url]
