Black and grey fine line botanical tattoo of a cow parsley sprig with stippled flower heads on the inner upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Cow parsley sprig on the upper arm

Fine line · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows a slender stem with four umbel-shaped flower heads and several feathery leaves, set against a pale background. The linework is thin and precise, with the flower heads built up using fine stippled dots for soft shading. The image is entirely black and grey, and the sprig is centred on the upper arm with the grey sleeve of a t-shirt at the top of the frame.

Fine line Botanical Dotwork Upper arm Flower Sprig Stem Leaves Wildflower

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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 big top has been folded into the back of the lorry since Tuesday, and the lane out of Hexham is lined on both sides with cow parsley, so high now it brushes the wing mirror. You walk the verge with a pair of pruning shears and a hessian bag because Mr Ashworth says the ring needs fresh stems for the last matinee, and because you are the only one left who knows which umbels will hold their shape in a bucket. The lions went to a sanctuary in March. The strongman sells insurance in Carlisle now. What remains is a tent with three patched panels, a calliope that wheezes only in the key of F, and you.

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Each flower head is a small lace parasol, dozens of stalks opening from a single point, and you learned from your grandmother to cut them at the knuckle of the stem so the rain can't get in. Through the hedge a farmer's dog barks at nothing. You pick the sprig with the four heads and the feathery leaves, the one that leans as if listening, and wrap its foot in wet newspaper.

Back at the field, the ringmaster is asleep under the ticket booth with his hat over his face. You set the stems in a jam jar on the trapeze bar, where the light from the open flap falls across them. Nobody will buy a ticket tonight. Nobody has bought one since the spring. But when the wind lifts the canvas, the pale heads tremble all together, and for a moment the empty ring looks like a room somebody has just stepped out of, meaning to come back.