Colour botanical tattoo of violets, foxgloves and other wildflowers with leaves, fern fronds and roots, in a realistic style on the outer thigh.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Botanical flower bouquet on a thigh

Botanical · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

A bouquet of wildflowers, including violets, foxglove and a trillium-like bloom, is tattooed on the outer thigh, with leaves, fern fronds and exposed roots spreading across the skin. The flowers are shaded in purples, pinks and mauves with soft highlights, while the leaves are greens and the fern and roots are rendered in grey shading. The composition is a loose, diagonal cluster that follows the curve of the leg.

Botanical Upper arm Flower Leaves Fern Root Bouquet Wildflower

Find an artist for this

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 old man sends you up the scree before the sun has cleared the ridge, a sack over one shoulder and a bronze trowel knocking against your hip. He has taught you the difference already, though you still mix things up when the light is poor. Violets go in the left fold of the cloth, dark and sweet-smelling. The purple bells of the foxglove you never touch with bare fingers, not since the goatherd's boy swelled up like a bladder.

Keep reading

You find the trillium where the stream bends under the cedars, three red-brown petals clasped above three leaves, a flower that stinks of rotting meat so the flies will carry its seed. Beside it the columbine nods its spurred heads. You dig for the roots, because the roots are what he pays for. You work the trowel round each one slowly, the way he showed you, and the earth comes away in threads. Fern fronds lie flat along the rock like something folded and forgotten.

By the time the sack is full your palms are stained green to the wrist. Back in the courtyard he tips everything onto the stone and sorts it without looking, nudging the foxglove to one corner with the flat of his knife. He lifts a root to the light, turns it over, and says nothing for a long while.

Then he hands you a length of wool and a coil of twine. 'Wrap them the way they grew,' he says, 'so whoever opens the packet can see what came out of the ground.' You bind the bundle loosely, letting the roots keep their tangle, and tie it off with the knot your mother taught you.