Black and grey botanical tattoo of turnips, an onion and leafy stems covering a woman's upper arm, drawn in fine engraved-style linework.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Root vegetables and leaves on an upper arm

Botanical · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows a cluster of root vegetables, including a turnip, an onion with trailing roots and a long tapered root, with leafy stems rising over the top of the arm. The design uses fine black outlines, cross-hatching on the leaves and stippled shading on the vegetables, with no colour. The motif wraps around the upper arm and shoulder, with the vegetables set low on the arm and the branches climbing towards the shoulder.

Botanical Dotwork Upper arm Shoulder Leaves Stem Branches Vegetable

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mabel Quayle had sorted the parcels at Thornleigh Junction for nine winters, and she knew the weight of a crate by the way the porter lifted it. This one came off the 4.12 on a wet Tuesday, stamped for a Mr Abel Greaves, Allotment Row, Hollin Ford, and it smelled of cold earth. Inside, packed in damp sacking, were four turnips, an onion still trailing its roots, and one long white parsnip that had grown crooked, like a man bending to listen.

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Greaves had died in March. The station knew because his widow had telegrammed to cancel the seed order. Mabel wrote the crate into the ledger under UNCLAIMED and then, because the afternoon was slow and the lamp was low, she took up her nib and drew the vegetables in the margin, the way her father had taught her to draw cabbages for the seed merchant's catalogue. She began with the onion, stippling its round belly until it looked ready to roll off the page. Then the turnip, its leaves lifting in hatched strokes.

The parsnip gave her trouble. She crosshatched its shoulders with fine lines set close together, so the light seemed to come from the left, the way it did through the signal box window at dusk. By the time the bell rang for the 5.40 she had filled half a page with roots and stems that climbed the margin like a hedge.

The widow came in on Friday to ask after the crate. Mabel slid the ledger across and watched her face. The woman said nothing for a while. Then she placed one finger on the parsnip and said, He always said it looked like a hand. Mabel did not answer, and the woman took the crate home on a handcart without signing for it.