Fickle Flora At The Vancouver Aquarium

If you're a science, nature museum, you try to make the exhibits as natural as possible. No one wants to see a fish in a swimming pool. Unless you're into that fetish. The Vancouver Aquarium has stuffed real flora in various exhibits, dioramas, enclosures. Mostly real plants, fake walls.

Fresh lake. Tough to see where the concrete and plastic ends and the real plants begin.

Real turtle and mini sun. We believe! Mossy swamp. And wall.

More marsh.

Walls, poured and placed. Hello tiny frogs.

Another "natural" display, looking a little Trader Vic's tropical restaurant decor. Time for a drink.

Flowering Kiev

If you've got the flower pots, you've gotta fill 'em. Kiev, in Eastern Europe and similar to neighboring countries, is also blooming crazy. A walk around the city reveals plenty of colorful examples of citizen green thumbs.

Who feels like watering? Go plastic.

Blooming Minsk

Maybe the summer season is short. Maybe the drab of winter is overwhelming. Maybe Belarusians really, really like flowers. Take a stroll around Minsk and you'll run into flowers everywhere - real, fake, in planters, cemeteries. Color, bursting with pride.

Planters, scattered like seed.

Real in front of fake. Window dressing.

Plastic in a cemetery.

More examples in a cemetery and planters. Why stop with the bright colors at the flowers?

Monumental cemetery bouquet.

Flora Break In Taipei

On the way to tea tasting in the Maokong valley, one can't help but stop to admire the flora. There's one small road that meanders between little tea plantations and fields of beautiful flowering plants, bursting with tropical wonder.

A moss covered wall makes a nice contrast to the surrounding jungle.

Fabulous flora.


Once more down the road.