Black ink tattoo of a large central flower with smaller blooms, buds and leaves, in a botanical dotwork style, on the inner upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Black ink flower cluster on an upper arm

Botanical · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows a large open five-petalled flower at the centre, with smaller flowers, buds and leaves arranged around it in a loose cluster. Bold outlines define the petals and leaves, while stippled dotwork fills the shading on the petals and leaf edges. The design is entirely in black ink, set against pale skin and a light textured wall.

Botanical Dotwork Upper arm Flower Bud Leaves Petal

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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

The band has got through two foxtrots before you notice the wildflower has slipped from your lapel and is lying face up on the sprung boards. Someone's heel has missed it by an inch. You stoop, pick it up, and find the stem bent but the petals whole, five of them, pale as milk around a dark star of stamens. You smooth it on your palm and think of the hedge behind the gasworks where you cut it this afternoon with your mother's kitchen scissors, the bramble snagging your stockings.

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Walter Kell from the bank is hovering by the cloakroom with two lemonades, pretending not to watch. He asked you to the Saturday dance in March, and you said yes mostly to stop your sister teasing you. Tonight he has brought his cousin's dance card and a pencil stub, and he holds them the way other men hold railway tickets, carefully, as if they might be needed in a hurry.

You pin the flower back where it was, just above the second button, and cross the floor. The bud beside it has opened while you were not looking, and you decide that counts as a good sign. Walter's face goes red when he sees you coming. He says he thought you had gone home, and you say you very nearly did.

When the last waltz starts, he takes a sprig from the lapel of his good jacket, something the florist in Chapel Street forced for him, and offers it to you. It is already browning at the edges. You tell him it will do. Under the hall lights the two flowers almost match.