Berlin: Ivy snuggles up to stockinged drainpipe

Outfitted by guerrilla-knitting street artists, this Berlin drainpipe offers a warm surface for an ivy vine on a cold November day.

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Berlin: Vine

Spotted a work of art on a building in the gallery area of Berlin-Mitte.

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San Francisco: Urban slants, urban plants

On the sloping streets of San Francisco, local plants are interacting with the local architecture, growing against all odds. Phoebe Kuo sent in the above photo, reporting, “An intrepid urban plant seeks refuge on a steep San Francisco incline on Hayes Street, facing Alamo Square park (home of the famous Full House ‘painted ladies’), inside a nice, wet rain gutter.” Let’s take a closer look…

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Santa Cruz, CA: Post-Christmas cactus

Once in awhile, in addition to 3d, living plants, I document depictions of plants, too. After eating some fantastic tacos in Santa Cruz early last month, I noticed a blobby little urban mural cactus hiding behind the Christmas decor.

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Santa Cruz, CA: Plants upon plants

Spotted last month on Soquel Avenue, the main drag in the sunny beach town of Santa Cruz, California. This luxuriant viny plant is hurrying up a high wall to join hordes of fellow plants, sitting in a row in little pots. I would love to go back in a year and see if the vine has reached its goal! For that matter, I’d love to go back right now – here in 15 C-below-freezing Berlin, there’s not much greenery to observe or much motivation for going outdoors.

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Berlin: Primary colors, fall plants

Spotted in Prenzlauer Berg yesterday, plants in RGB…

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‘Round the world, instantly, with plant photographers

Let’s travel to some cities other than Berlin and New York to marvel at their plant life. Our guides will be a couple of photographers from Instagram, a Twitter-esque network for sharing mobile phone snapshots. It’s a fun way to experience daily life in faraway cities, especially when you glimpse some greenery, as in the the lovely shot above, “Amsterdam morning,” by Ulla Välk (@bliksem). She’s based in Amsterdam but travels frequently, sharing sights from around Europe. Read on for more from Ulla…

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Carmona, Spain: Urban garden by the old city wall

And for a peek at the plants inside the city walls, read on…

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Alcácer do Sal, PT: Pigeons and plants

The pretty, aging river-port town of Alcácer do Sal is known for the storks that nest atop its church towers, but it was the pigeons and plants that caught my eye.

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New Haven: Bittersweet’s a climber

On the side of a house on Orange Street, this incredibly twining vine impressed me. I was on my first tentative urban plant walk in New Haven, seeing if there were any plants to observe, despite it being the dead of winter. Somehow I was drawn to the space between two houses, where I found this vine twining tightly around itself and everything else it could reach.

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