Shaded red hibiscus flower with black ornamental swirls across the upper back near the shoulder blade, in a botanical style.

Red hibiscus with black swirls on upper back

Botanical · Back · Mixed · Photo

A large, shaded red hibiscus flower sits at the centre of the design, with soft gradients on its petals and a darker centre with orange stamens. Black filigree swirls and scrolling tendrils surround the flower, with thin red linework trailing through the spaces between them. The composition covers the upper back and shoulder blade, and a partial grey design is visible at the left edge of the frame.

Botanical Realism Back Hibiscus Flower Swirl Scroll Tendril Petal Stamen

Find an artist for this

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

The hibiscus opened at ten past six, a full hour before Mr Parr had ever allowed it to. I was on the stepladder with the watering can when the bud split, and I stood there with water running over my shoe because you do not look away from a thing like that. Red as a postbox, the petals folded out like someone unpacking a good coat.

Keep reading

Mr Parr had kept that plant for thirty-one years in the glasshouse at the end of Tanner Lane, and in all that time it had flowered once a summer, for a single day, then dropped its petals onto the potting bench as if it were apologising. He used to say a hibiscus was a flower with a deadline. He kept a ledger of its openings in pencil on the backs of seed packets, and he never once let me write in it.

The council lads came on the Thursday to take the glasshouse down. They had the paperwork and a van with a crane arm, and one of them asked whether the old plant was worth saving. I said it was going to bloom before they got the glass off, and he laughed. It did. By noon the petals had gone the colour of the inside of a shell, the black tracery of the leaves had softened at the edges, and the stamens stood up gold in the middle like a row of small candles.

I took a cutting that afternoon, wrapped it in wet newspaper and put it inside my coat. Then I wrote the date on a seed packet and, for the first time, I added my own pencil mark beneath his.