["python","matplotlib"]
Get default line color cycle

I noticed when you plot that the first line is blue, then orange, then green, and so on. Is there some way to access this list of colors? I've seen a million posts on how to change the color cycle or access the iterator, but not on how to just get the list of colors that matplotlib cycles through by default.
In matplotlib versions >= 1.5, you can print the rcParam called axes.prop_cycle: print(plt.rcParams['axes.prop_cycle'].by_key()['color']) # [u'#1f77b4', u'#ff7f0e', u'#2ca02c', u'#d62728', u'#9467bd', u'#8c564b', u'#e377c2', u'#7f7f7f', u'#bcbd22', u'#17becf'] Or equivalently, in python2: print plt.rcParams['axes.prop_cycle'].by_key()['color'] In versions < 1.5, this was called color_cycle: print plt.rcParams['axes.color_cycle'] # [u'b', u'g', u'r', u'c', u'm', u'y', u'k'] Note that the default color cycle changed in version 2.0.0 http://matplotlib.org/users/dflt_style_changes.html#colors-in-default-property-cycle