I don't know what it is but I like it

The Baroness and I were in York yesterday to take our son out to lunch. Beforehand we popped into a branch of The Works: it's always a good place to look out for crafting bargains.

We found this:

It wasn't entirely clear what it was but at £3 for a pack the size of a bag of icing sugar it seemed rude not to give it a chance.

I figured that if it was individual particles it would serve as an alternative to clump foliage and if it was in sheets it could be glued down to basing material to make fields.

It turns out to be an elasticated mesh material that, when removed from the bag, expands out to maybe the size of a handball. Sorry, I seem to be choosing odd size analogies today.

It looks like it should cut easily with scissors, maybe to form the canopy of homemade trees? 

The "bobbles" along the individual threads are not stuck on but are part of the threads themselves. As such I think this would be significantly more robust in transport than lichen or rubberised horsehair with glued-on flock.

The pics below show the whole pack with some 28mm Pictish skirmishers for scale.

As the title above suggests, I've no idea what this stuff is called aside from "Artificial Moss" but I think I might pick up another pack or two if it's available from my local branch. It will do for pretty much any job you'd use lichen for and looks more realistic in my opinion.