You can run up most vines regardless of verticality.

You can push balls from underneath: This is useful for the section where you need to stack many purple balls to reach a sniffing plant.

You can jump over the plant before it fully finishes it's animation, allowing for a small time save. In addition to this, you can activate a sniffing plant, then get the color needed before it finishes it's animation and it will take your new color. For example: Say you're blue and need to be green, and the yellow is near the plant. You can activate the green plant as blue, get the new color combination and it will take your new color instead of the original color you were when activating the plant, as long as you do so before the animation is over.