Colour tattoo of a blossoming tree with pink flowers, set within a green lotus and a yellow circle holding a green Sanskrit-style symbol, on the back.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Blossom tree within a green lotus and yellow circle

Botanical · Back · Colour · Photo

A full-colour tattoo shows a dark, twisting tree with pink cherry blossoms growing above a yellow circle. Inside the circle sits a bold green symbol over teal linework of a star shape, and green lotus petals frame the design. Black swirling tendrils trail beneath it, and the shading on the trunk gives it depth against the bright ink.

Botanical Neo-trad Back Tree Cherry blossom Lotus Symbol Circle Swirl Star Leaves

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nobody in Porthgarrow could say how the blackthorn came to be growing out of the harbour wall, only that it was there before the lifeboat house and would be there after. Its trunk was twisted like wet rope, the bark gone the colour of coal, and every March it flowered pink while the rest of the coast was still grey. My grandmother said it was the town's heart and that no one should cut a single branch, or the boats would not come home.

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The summer I was eleven, my brother Tobias decided to prove her wrong. He took my father's bowsaw down to the quay at low tide, a shilling wagered against my pocketknife. He got as far as the second bough before the bark began to bleed a thin amber sap that ran down the stones and pooled in the sun. Tobias dropped the saw and stood there with his hands wet to the wrist, and old Abel mending nets nearby only laughed and said the tree had been waiting for someone to ask it properly.

That night the wind came round to the north-east and the fleet was caught out past the Teeth. We stood on the wall with lanterns and watched the water go black. Then the blossom opened all at once, a pale pink glow that lit the mouth of the harbour like a yellow moon set low, and one by one the boats turned towards it. Eleven came in. My grandmother counted them twice on her fingers and did not say a word to Tobias, which was worse than any scolding.

Tobias never touched a saw again. He took up glass-cutting instead, and every March he comes down to the quay with a fresh lens and holds it against the bark until the light through it turns green as a lotus leaf, and the old tree seems to lean in to look.