Black fern frond tattoo in stippled dotwork shading on the inner forearm of a person whose sleeve is rolled up.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Fern frond on a forearm

Botanical · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A single fern frond is tattooed on the forearm, with its central stem and branching leaflets drawn in dark ink. The leaflets are built up with fine stippled dots and light shading, giving the plant some depth and texture. The frond sits near the centre of the frame against plain skin, with a beige sleeve pushed up above it and a cream background.

Botanical Dotwork Forearm Fern Frond Leaf Plant Stem

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The oven door had been open for ten minutes before Nell Varley noticed the frond lying on the proving cloth. It must have blown in on the cold, caught between the back step and the flour sacks, dark and feathered like a drawing of something that had never been allowed to grow out of its ink. She lifted it by the stalk. Dew had dried in the fine dots along each leaflet, leaving them grey and speckled.

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The lane behind the bakery ran up to the old quarry, where ferns grew thick in the wet crevices, and Mr Pascoe used to cut them for the church flowers before his knees gave out. He had been gone three winters now. Nell still kept his bread knife, the one with the bone handle, and she used it to score the day's first batch, drawing the blade in long curving strokes that spread out from a central cut like veins.

By the time the first van rattled past the window, the loaves sat cooling in rows on the wire racks, each one marked with a small fern of slashes. She had not meant it as anything. She had only been trying to get the shape right, the way the leaflets lifted in pairs and narrowed toward the tip, until the pattern looked less like a cut and more like something that had grown there.

The sun came up behind the chapel tower and laid the shadow of the window across the counter. Nell filled a jar with water, stood the frond in it on the sill, and left it there, where it would keep a day or two before it dried to paper.