Full-colour botanical tattoo of purple rhododendron, red and orange poppies and blue flowers with green leaves across the upper arm and shoulder.

Colourful wildflower bouquet sleeve on upper arm

Botanical · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

A colour tattoo of a wildflower bouquet covers the upper arm and runs toward the shoulder. A purple rhododendron sits at the top, with red and orange poppies and clusters of blue flowers below, all framed by green leaves and stems. The shading is soft and naturalistic, with tonal gradients on the petals and fine detail in the flower centres, and the design is shown against a blurred background with a polka-dot top in the foreground.

Botanical Realism Upper arm Shoulder Poppy Flower Bouquet Leaves Stem

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mr Pardoe came in every Friday with the same question and the same two shillings, and every Friday my mother pretended she hadn't heard it. He wanted a bunch that would last the bus ride to Tiverton and look as though the hedgerows had been raided on purpose. So we built him one from what the market had left: a rhododendron heavy as a fist, delphinium blue as a gas flame, and poppies so red they looked wet.

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The poppies were the trouble. They open in the heat and shed their petals by noon, and he never believed us. He would hold the stems up to the shop window like a jeweller checking a stone. 'Ruby,' he'd say. 'Not Sunday best, ruby.' My mother wrapped them in damp newspaper and told him to keep them out of the sun. He always promised he would, and I never once saw him carry them anywhere but straight to the bridge.

The Friday before the storm, he didn't come. We kept his bunch in the cold bucket at the back, the rhododendron drooping, the blue going grey at the tips. On the Saturday a girl in a school coat asked for flowers for a grave, and my mother reached for the bucket without a word. The girl looked at the poppies and said her father always bought those. Then she counted two shillings onto the counter, and my mother pushed them back across to her.

'Already paid,' she said. 'Friday. He said you'd know which ones.'