Black and grey botanical tattoo of flowers, leaves and a tied bundle of herbs across an upper arm.

Botanical flowers and herb bundle on upper arm

Botanical · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A tattoo of flowering stems with rounded blooms and serrated leaves runs down the upper arm, with a separate bundle of slender herb sprigs tied with thin string below it. The work uses dense hatching and fine outlines to model the petals and leaves, with soft grey shading. The arm is photographed in profile against a plain beige background, and the wearer's face is not shown.

Botanical Upper arm Flower Leaves Herb Sprig String Stem

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit closer, young brother, and mind the bundle on the bench, for it is the last of the rosemary that Brother Anselm tied before the frost took him. You will want to know why we keep the herbs bound with string and not loose in the jars. I will tell you, though the old abbot would say I tell it wrong.

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When the sickness came up the river in the year of the broken bells, the infirmarian at Saint Olave's had two hands and a garden of nine beds. Anselm walked those beds every morning with a knife, a basket and a ledger tucked in his sleeve. He took no herb he could not name, and he named each one aloud, as if the plants were novices who might forget their vows. Hyssop for the chest. Sage for the throat. Rue for the bad dreams that come with fever.

The turn came in the third week, when the rosemary in the north bed bolted and no one would touch it. The brothers said it had gone to seed in the wrong season and was cursed. Anselm cut it anyway, tied it into a bundle with a length of kitchen twine, and hung it above the sickbed of the miller's boy. The boy lived. Anselm did not, and the twine was the last knot he ever tied.

So when you tie your bundles, tie them the way he did, loose enough to dry and tight enough to hold. The garden remembers who looks after it.