Black and grey tattoo of shaded plumeria flowers with tribal swirls and bands running down the side of a thigh.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Plumeria and tribal design on a thigh

Botanical · Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows three shaded plumeria flowers linked by bold tribal-style bands, spirals and curling swirls that follow the curve of the thigh from hip to knee. The shading is smooth and graded, with soft highlights on the petals and fine dotted detail in the spiral sections. The photograph is in black and white, with the design shown across most of the frame against a dark background.

Botanical Thigh Plumeria Flower Tribal Swirl Spiral Band

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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

Dear Mere, the cutting you asked for has finally taken. I wrapped the stem in damp newspaper and carried it in my lap through two airports, so if it dies I will blame the customs man in Auckland who turned it over like contraband. It is not contraband. It is only a flower that refuses to be ordinary.

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Mum's old tree by the water tank dropped its last blossoms the week you left. Uncle Tane still says a plumeria must be planted where the sea wind can reach it, or it grows sulky and bare. So I dug a hole beside the fence, where the wind comes round the corner off the lagoon, and I put the cutting in with a handful of sand and the crushed shell you sent me in that tin years ago.

The wood cracked green on the second morning. By the end of the week there were three new leaves, glossy as wet paint, and the dark bands along the trunk looked suddenly like the carving on the canoe in the museum, all those swirls that curl back on themselves so you can never find where they begin.

I keep thinking you should come home and see it before the cyclone season. Bring the boys. Bring the book of your grandmother's designs you keep saying you'll bring. We can sit under the tree and you can tell me which curl means what, and I will pretend I did not already know.