Black and grey fine line drawing of a dandelion seed head with drifting seeds on a long stem, on white paper, in a botanical design.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Dandelion seed head in fine pen line

Fine line · Black and grey · Flash

A dandelion seed head sits at the centre of the drawing, with its fine seeds spreading outwards and some drifting loose at the top left. The linework is delicate and even, built from thin dark strokes with light shading at the base of the seed head. The image is in black and grey on a plain white background, with the stem running down to the bottom edge.

Fine line Botanical Dandelion Seed Seed head Stem

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mrs Pryce had let the back bedroom to the same man every August for eleven years, and every August he came down to breakfast with the same question about the weather, which she answered the same way: it would turn by four. I was nine the summer I first saw him kneel on the gravel of the car park with his nose an inch from a dandelion clock, counting under his breath.

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"Forty-one," he said, when I asked. "Forty-one seeds, and one of them is going to Ireland."

He told me the rules. You blew once, hard, and whatever stayed on the stalk did not count. Whatever flew, you could keep. He had a tin of travel sweets in his coat pocket, a bad knee, and a way of standing very still when the wind came off the sea, as if he were waiting to be told something. The seed head in his fingers was grey and perfect, the fine filaments splayed like the spokes of a bicycle wheel that had lost its rim.

The last August, he did not come down to breakfast at all. Mrs Pryce left his porridge on the hob and went up twice. On the third morning there was a single dandelion clock on the windowsill of the back bedroom, pressed flat between the pages of a Sunday supplement, and a note in soft pencil: Blow once. Keep what flies.

I took it out to the cliff path, where the wind always comes from the west. I blew. Most of them went. A few stayed on the stalk, stubborn, and I left them there for whoever came next.