Realistic botanical tattoo of grey chrysanthemums with purple blooms and black ants, spanning the back of a person's neck and shoulder.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Floral tattoo with ants on neck and shoulder

Botanical · Neck · Mixed · Photo

A close photograph of the back of a person's neck and shoulder, cropped so no face is visible, with a large cluster of chrysanthemum-style flowers and leaves inked across the skin. The flowers and foliage are rendered in soft grey shading with several purple blooms, and two black ants and a black beetle sit among the leaves. The dark background and warm side lighting make the skin and ink stand out, with the design flowing down over the shoulder blade.

Botanical Realism Neck Shoulder Chrysanthemum Flower Leaves Beetle Insect Bloom

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Pauline,

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The chrysanthemums came up on the fourteenth floor the same week the lift broke again, which Mr Okafor from 14C says is the council's idea of a joke. I've got them in the blue pots you brought back from Margate, the ones with the chip on the rim. The grey ones are doing well, big soft heads like wet wool, but the two purples Dad bought from the market in October are the ones I keep going out to check.

The ants found them before I did. There's a line of them up the drainpipe, black and purposeful, climbing to the leaves to tend the greenfly as if they're herding sheep. I tried the soap spray Mum swore by. Mr Okafor said leave them be, they're only doing a job. I said I'd rather a job that didn't involve my roses, and he laughed and said I hadn't got any roses, which is fair.

Last Thursday a beetle got in through the balcony door, shiny as a conker, and walked straight across the lino like it had a bus to catch. I caught it in a takeaway tub and carried it down thirteen flights, because the lift was still broken and I wasn't trusting the stairs with it. At the bottom I tipped it onto the grass by the bins and it just sat there cleaning its feelers, in no hurry at all.

I've decided the purples can have the ants. Next spring I'll cut the tops for the kitchen table and leave the rest for whoever's climbing. Come up and see them before the frost, the view's better than the telly and the tea's stronger.

Love, Jan