Black and grey botanical tattoo of a leafy sprig running up the inside of a forearm.

Botanical sprig on a forearm

Botanical · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A slender sprig with a central stem and many pointed, overlapping leaves runs up the inner forearm. The leaves are shaded in soft grey washes with fine outlines, and the stem is drawn with delicate linework. The plain grey-toned background and the arm held out to the side keep the focus on the tattoo.

Botanical Forearm Sprig Leaves Stem Plant Foliage

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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 sage had gone to seed along the south wall of the cottage the spring Mrs Harrow's husband drowned, and nobody in Porthgwen had the heart to pull it. Ada Pendray came up the lane with a basket on her arm and found the bush standing in the rain, grey-green and untidy, its leaves still sharp at the points. She cut a sprig for the pot without thinking, the way she always had, and stood holding it under the eaves while the gulls argued over the harbour.

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Her mother had kept a book of cures in the dresser drawer, a ledger with a cracked spine and the names of the herbs written in brown ink down the margins. Sage for the throat, sage for the grief that sits under the ribs and will not shift, sage in the bath water for a child with fever. Ada had never believed a word of it. She read the pages anyway, late, with the lamp turned low so the boys would not wake.

The boat came in on the Thursday tide with only two men aboard. Ada went down to the quay with the sprig still in her coat pocket, and when Mrs Harrow asked her what on earth she was carrying, Ada pressed it into her hand. The old woman turned it over, smelled it, and laughed once, a short dry sound like a stone skipping. Then she tucked it behind her ear and went home to put the kettle on.