Fine line black and grey dandelion with seeds drifting off on the inner forearm near the wrist, shown against a floral dress.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Dandelion seeds tattoo on a wrist

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A small dandelion seed head sits on the inner forearm close to the wrist, with several seeds drifting away from it. The linework is delicate and light, with soft grey shading giving the seed head some depth. The tattoo is shown against a dark purple and red floral dress, with rings and red nail polish visible on the hand.

Fine line Botanical Forearm Dandelion Seed Seed head Wind Flower

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The dry years had taken the orchards along the Severn terraces, and by the time the rail spurs went quiet, the only green things left grew in the cracks of the platforms. Old Mother Hesketh said the dandelions had been carried here by the first tinkers, who wanted a weed that could walk. Each spring she sent her grandson Tobin up the embankment with a tin of ash and one rule: never pick a seed head whole, only the first blow.

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Tobin did not believe in walking weeds. He believed in the cold rain coming off the estuary and the way the grey towers at Gloucester leaned over the water. But one morning in the seventh spring he found a seed head as big as a fist standing beside the signal box, so pale and perfect that he could not bring himself to blow it. He carried it home in both hands, the way you would carry a bowl of milk.

Hesketh met him at the gate. 'Blow it on the step,' she said, 'and tell the wind where you want it to go.' Tobin asked where that would be. She shrugged. 'Anywhere the wind hasn't been yet.' So he blew, and the seeds lifted in a rush over the wall, over the fallen gate and the dead orchard, past the flooded lock where nothing had grown for forty years, until he could only follow them as specks against the white sky.

By autumn there were yellow heads all along the lock path, and a boy from the next valley came with a cart asking whose land it was. Tobin said it belonged to the wind, and that he only kept the gate. The old woman laughed so hard she had to sit down on the step, and that night she told him the wind had never once asked permission, which was why people kept sending it things.