Black and grey shaded rose tattoo with leaves on the upper back near the shoulder blade, with bold outlines and soft grey shading.

Black and grey rose on the upper back

Traditional · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A large rose in full bloom is tattooed on the upper back near the shoulder blade, with several leaves spreading out from its base. The petals and leaves are drawn with dark outlines and built up with smooth grey shading and hatched detail. The tattoo is in black and grey ink, set against a plain pale background and a black strappy top.

Traditional Botanical Back Rose Flower Leaves

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit down, the lot of you, the soup can keep another five minutes. I want this told before the cake, because the bride's great-grandmother never let a thing go unsaid. In 1931 Nell Carrow kept the vicarage garden at Thornby with one hand and a ledger with the other, and the rose she loved best was a dark old damask called Mrs Pell's Last. It was near black in June and grey as slate by the first frost, and the vicar swore it was the only thing in Thornby that never told a lie.

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The trouble started the spring a new curate arrived with a box of cuttings from a nursery in Leeds. He wanted the south wall for a climber with a sweeter name, and he had the bishop's letter to prove it. Nell said nothing. She went out at dusk with a trowel and a spool of white cotton and tied a ribbon round every stem she meant to keep. By morning the curate's cuttings lay in a neat row on the church step, roots turned to the sky, and nobody in the parish would say who had done it.

The curate came to the Carrows' door in a wet coat and asked her straight. Nell gave him a cup of tea and one open bloom, heavy and grey at the edges, and told him a rose only holds a garden if somebody is stubborn enough to defend it. He left the wall alone. Years later a card came from Leeds with a photograph of a rose he had grown himself, pale and forgettable, and beneath it he had written: still not as good as Mrs Pell's.

So raise your glasses to the bride and groom, and to the old bush at the back of the vicarage, still going strong under new management. Mind the thorns on your way out. Nell's cuttings have a way of getting into the bouquet.