Black and grey botanical tattoo of hanging cherries with long leaves on a forearm, with a separate sprig of foliage above it.

Cherry branch and sprig on a forearm

Botanical · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A branch hangs from a thin stem with two shaded cherries and long, curved leaves that are rendered with soft grey gradients. A second sprig of narrow leaves runs diagonally across the upper right of the arm, drawn in finer outline. The image is shot close and straight on, with a neutral grey background and the tattoo sitting along the outer forearm.

Botanical Realism Forearm Cherry Branch Leaves Sprig Stem Berry

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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

Sit down, and mind the draught from that door, it has been letting the sea in since the war. You want the cherry tree? Everybody wants the cherry tree. Mrs Pellow's tree stood behind the boarding house on Gull Terrace, and every June it dropped so much fruit onto the back path that the lodgers went out in their slippers and came back purple.

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The summer the Harrow boy came to lodge, he was sixteen, sulky, and drew birds in a notebook he kept under his pillow. He found the tree was dying from the root, a grey rot nobody had spotted under all that blossom. He cut one sprig, two cherries still hanging off it, and carried it down to the harbour wall. He said a thing that had been cut should be looked at properly before anyone threw it out.

Mrs Pellow shouted for him, then stopped shouting, because the branch had dried into the shape of a hand reaching for something. He drew it that night, every leaf curled the way the wind had curled it, and pinned the page above his bed. When the tree came down in the autumn gales, that page was all that was left of its shadow on the back step.

So if you ever stay on Gull Terrace, you'll find the drawing in the hall behind the glass, with a pencilled 23 in the corner. That was his room number, and also, Mrs Pellow swore, the number of nights he slept with the window open for the smell of the orchard. Now your tea is going cold, and I've been talking since the tide turned.