Black botanical tattoo of flowers and leaves climbing up the inner forearm, with small Roman numerals on the wrist.

Botanical flowers and leaves on a forearm

Botanical · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A cluster of flowers and pointed leaves trails from the inner forearm towards the wrist, drawn in black ink. The shading looks built up from small dots and fine strokes, giving the petals and leaves a soft texture. Small Roman numerals sit on the wrist below the floral design, and the plain pale wall and striped top keep the focus on the ink.

Botanical Dotwork Forearm Flower Leaves Vine Roman numeral

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The cutting was already drooping in the jam jar when Mr Ashdown's van pulled up outside the old Pemberton place, and you had perhaps ten minutes before he noticed the wall was bare. Nobody had pruned the star jasmine since Mrs Pemberton died in Lent. It had crept over the brickwork in pale stars and pointed leaves, and the council wanted the wall cleared for a new garage by June.

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You cut the stem at a slant, the way she had shown you when you were nine, just below a node where the leaves came out in threes. You stripped the lower pair and left the top ones shining. The jar went inside your coat. Ashdown was wrestling a measuring tape that kept snapping back at him, and he did not turn round when you walked past with your hand pressed flat against your coat like a girl hiding a letter.

The 4.10 to Maidstone was nearly empty. You held the jar on your knees and watched the hop fields go by, flat and brown under a sky the colour of dishwater, changing the water at every stop with a cup from the lavatory tap. By the time the train reached the city your fingers smelled of green sap and cold tin. You thought about her nephew, who had written that the house would be sold by autumn, and about how little a person could carry out of a garden in one afternoon.

That night you set the jar on the windowsill of the rented room above the baker's. Ten days later a fine white thread had grown from the cut end, and a new leaf had unfurled at the top, so small you had to hold the jar to the lamp to be sure of it. You kept it there, and you kept the window open.