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A Conversation-Starting Houseplant That Adds a Bohemian Touch

Photo: Bobby Doherty/New York Magazine

Among numerous other ’70s-era tropes creeping into living rooms these days—shaggy carpets, kooky ceramics—houseplants are reemerging in a distinctly weirder fashion. In parlor floors and light-filled lofts from Greenpoint to Nolita, you’ll find statement-making potted swamp trees, wall-mounted succulent displays, and eight-foot-long twists of variegated Hindu rope leaves (shown here; from $12 at logees.com). The common mini-cactus, in other words, is no longer going to cut it.

*This article appears in the September 8, 2014 issue of New York Magazine.

A Conversation-Starting Houseplant