Black and grey palm tree tattoo on the inner ankle, with a solid trunk and layered fronds in a silhouette style.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Palm tree on an ankle

Blackwork · Ankle · Black and grey · Photo

A solid black palm tree sits on the side of a leg, with a tall curved trunk rising from a small grassy base at the ankle. The fronds are filled in with dense black ink and textured edges, giving a silhouette effect. The image is black and white, with a plain wall and wooden floor behind the leg.

Blackwork Ankle Palm tree Palm Tree Silhouette

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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

Sit down, the lot of you, the four-ten is always late and the urn is always on. You want the story of the palm. Everyone asks. It was never planted by the council, whatever the brass plate says, and never by the railway company either. It came up from a crate of Spanish oranges that was meant for Bristol and got put off at Penzance by a clerk who could not read his own docket. Alfie Cragg, porter, found a split green thing wedged in the straw, and because nobody had signed for it he slipped it inside his coat and carried it up the platform like a stolen kitten.

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He planted it behind the waiting room where the wind couldn't reach, and he watered it from his tin cup every morning before the milk train. The stationmaster said it was a weed and would have it out. Alfie said it was a tree and he would have his dinner under it. Winters came and went. The station clock stopped twice and the signal box caught fire once, and still that trunk kept leaning a little further towards the sea, as if it had heard the sea was nearby and wanted to see for itself.

Then in the spring they closed the goods yard, the stationmaster came out with a saw and a face like thunder. Alfie stood in front of the trunk with his arms out. Nobody heard what he said, but the saw went back in its case and the stationmaster walked off down the line with his hands in his pockets. Alfie died the following winter. The palm is still here. Mind your step on the way out, the roots have lifted the flags, and when the wind comes off the bay you will see its fronds throw a shadow like a hand across the platform. That, I always say, is Alfie waving you off.