Black and grey botanical tattoo of a bare tree with trailing roots across the back, shown from behind.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Bare tree with roots across a back

Botanical · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A woman is seen from behind, showing a large tattoo of a leafless tree that spans her upper and mid back and continues down to her lower back. The trunk and branches are drawn in fine, shaded linework, with small leaves and a few butterflies scattered among the upper branches. The roots spread out over the lower back, and the tattoo is entirely in black and grey ink against natural skin, with a grassy background and a studded belt in view.

Botanical Back Tree Branches Root Leaves Butterfly

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ruth, the guard at Sallow Bridge wanted to know what was wrapped in wet sacking across the back seat, and I told him it was a tree, which was true, and that it had come from the field by the old stone marker, which was also true. He turned the torch on the roots, pale and knotted in their hessian bag, and asked whether it had papers. I said the roots had been growing under both countries for longer than either had kept records, and he laughed and waved us through without even opening the boot.

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The elm stood on the line before anyone thought to draw one. Grandfather Eli measured it every spring with a knotted length of string, and the surveyors who came after gave up trying to decide whose it was, because its roots ran beneath the stream and came up on the far bank as thick as a man's wrist. In winter its crown went bare and grey against the hill, but in March a few butterflies would crawl out of the cracks in the bark, stiff and pale from sleeping, and lift away south over the wire.

Last Tuesday the men from the ministry came with their drawings for the new fence. Their line ran straight through the trunk. So we dug it out before dawn, Tom and I, working by lantern, cutting every root that crossed the water and wrapping each cut end in damp cloth so it would not die on the road. It took four hours. Tom cried when the last root came free, and I pretended not to see.

Now it is in the yard behind the cottage, sitting in a bucket of loam while I write this. I have not planted it yet. I want you to come and see which side of the wall it chooses to lean towards, because I think it will not decide until someone is there to watch.