Pencil drawing of an open magnolia flower with two closed buds and a leaf, shaded in greys on a white background, suitable as a botanical tattoo design.

Magnolia bloom and buds in pencil

Botanical · Black and grey · Flash

A magnolia flower sits open at the centre, with its cupped petals shaded in soft grey pencil and its stamens picked out in fine dark linework. Two closed buds and a leaf with visible veins are arranged around it, with the largest bud at lower left. The drawing is rendered in black and grey pencil on a plain white background with no border or text.

Botanical Magnolia Flower Bud Leaf Petal Stamen

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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

Eli Pardoe had been told the magnolia would never flower in that yard. The wall faced north, the clay held water like a sponge, and the nursery in Frome had written "patience required" on the label in green biro. He planted it anyway the spring his wife moved to Penzance, and for nine years he watered it from a dented can and got nothing but leaves that turned the colour of old pennies.

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The buds came the winter his daughter stopped ringing on Sundays. There were two of them, tight and furred like the ears of a hare, sitting along the bare grey stems as if they were waiting for an invitation. Eli checked them every morning with his tea going cold on the wall. Frost came, then sleet, then a false warm week in March that tricked the whole street into blossom, and still the buds stayed shut, hard as cloves.

On a Tuesday in April the largest one split along a seam, and by Thursday the cups had unfolded into a bloom the size of a child's hand, cream at the edges and faintly flushed at the base, with a centre of dark stamens crowded like the bristles of a brush. He cut a single stem with the kitchen scissors, wrapped it in a damp tea towel, and caught the first train west without deciding anything at all.

He reached the platform at Penzance with the stem bent and the petals bruised along one edge, and he stood there for a long time, not knowing whether to walk up the hill or turn round. In the end he eased one petal free and tucked it into the pocket of his coat, where it stayed through the whole long walk up the hill, thin as paper and cool against his hand.