Fine line botanical tree tattoo in black ink across a person's upper back, with branches, leaves and flowers and two embracing figures in the trunk.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Fine line tree across upper back

Fine line · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A large tree with branching limbs, curling tendrils, leaves and small flowers fills the upper back. The linework is fine and detailed, with a sprig of foliage along the base and what appears to be two figures embracing within the trunk. The image is shown in black ink against the skin, with the subject's back and dark top filling the frame.

Fine line Botanical Back Tree Branches Leaves Flower Tendril Vine Figure Embrace

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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 rain had been coming sideways off the river since eight, and by ten the bare-root stock was sitting in a puddle I'd stopped trying to move. Nobody buys hawthorn whips in a downpour unless they've already decided, so when the woman in the green anorak stopped at my trestle I kept counting cuttings into the bucket, nine for a pound, the way Dad taught me before his knees gave out and the stall became mine.

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She asked if I had anything from an old ash, the kind with two trunks grown together low down so they lean into each other like they're sharing a secret. Her gran had one in a field above Marlow, she said, and when the field was sold the family split the tree between three sisters by taking a cutting each. Hers had never taken. I told her grafting was mostly patience and a sharp knife, and that I had a rootstock out back that would forgive a lot. We sat under the gazebo flap while I cut a whip from the wood she brought in a freezer bag, and she talked about her gran pressing her palm flat against the bark and saying the old ones kept the orchard standing.

I bound the join with raffia and sealed it with wax the colour of tea, and while I worked I thought about Dad's hands doing exactly this, slow and certain, the morning he showed me how a graft is really two lives agreeing to be one. She watched the knife the whole time and didn't once check her phone.

When she paid, I wouldn't take the pound. She tucked the little bundle inside her coat against the rain and walked off toward the car park, and by the time we packed up the puddle had reached the sign that said NINE FOR A POUND and swallowed the last of the letters. I left it there.