Close-up of a small black fine line palm tree tattoo on a person's upper back near the shoulder blade, worn with a blue vest top.

Small palm tree on upper back

Fine line · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A slim palm tree with a curved trunk and fronds sits on the upper back, close to the shoulder blade. It is drawn in thin black linework with light shading on the fronds, and the ink is the only colour against the skin. The tattoo is small and centred in the frame, with a blue tank top and a blurred outdoor background around it.

Fine line Back Palm tree Palm Tree

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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

Mind the step, it's iced over again, and sit where the range can reach you. No, the good chair. Right. You asked how a palm tree came to stand in a Devon field full of mud, and I'll tell you, though my mother told it wrong and her mother before her told it wrong too.

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My grandfather, Tobias Penhale, came home from the Lisbon docks in 1911 with a hard green seed sewn into the lining of his coat. A Portuguese deckhand had given it him over a card game he'd lost on purpose, so he said, and he carried it all the way up the Tamar in his pocket like a stone he meant to skim. He planted it in a bucket of cowshed ash and sea salt and put it against the south wall, where the sun lies longest. The neighbours laughed themselves hoarse. The vicar's wife asked for a cutting and was refused.

The winter of 1947 came down hard in January. Frost sat on the yard for nine days together and the lamp he kept lit under the sacking blew out on the ninth night. In the morning the top of the little tree was black as a burnt match. He sat in the byre all that day with his hands between his knees, and the cows watched him the way cows do. Then, in the grey light of the second morning, he saw one frond had pushed out green from the heart of it.

So when you see a palm in this country, it isn't the sun it wants. It's stubbornness, pure and plain. Now pass me that cup, and mind you don't repeat any of this to the vicar.