Black and grey fine line ginkgo leaf sprig tattoo on the upper back, with a black bandeau strap below it.

Ginkgo leaf sprig on upper back

Botanical · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A sprig of ginkgo leaves rises from a thin stem, with one leaf at the top, several in the middle and a cluster at the base. The leaves use fine outline work with soft grey shading and small stipple-like detail in the fan shapes. The tattoo sits on bare skin against a plain background, with a black bandeau strap crossing below it and greenery visible at the edges.

Botanical Fine line Back Leaf Sprig Stem Plant

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Now sit still, because the guard is coming and he has a face like a shut gate. Yes, that one. Forty years he has stood on that bridge and never once looked up, so he never saw what Marta had tucked inside her coat.

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It was no longer than a forearm, a sprig wrapped in damp newspaper with its roots in a jam jar of river water. Three little fans of leaves rode at the top of it, folded the way a child folds her hands when she has been told to be quiet. The ginkgo, her father used to say, is the tree that lived through everything. It grew back in the burnt streets of the old city when nothing else would. Marta had been forbidden to carry anything across that river, and so she carried it, holding the jar against her chest like a lantern.

The guard lifted the newspaper with the end of his pencil. What do you carry, he asked. Only leaves, sir, said Marta. Look how they fan out, like hands. You can count the veins if you like. He counted them, all the way out to the ragged edges, and something in his gate of a face gave way. He waved her through without a word.

The next autumn, in a garden on the far bank, the sprig became a tree taller than the fence, and one night every leaf turned gold at once and fell in a single morning. Marta swept them into a heap and laughed until she cried. The bare stem stood there, still green where the bark was cut. That is why we never buy a ginkgo from a shop, my darling. Pass me the tea.