Small fine line tattoo on the upper arm of a tree split in two, with green foliage on the left and bare black branches on the right.

Split tree on upper arm

Fine line · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

A small tree sits on the inner upper arm, with its trunk running straight down from the crown. The left half of the canopy is filled with soft green and grey-green shading that suggests leaves, while the right half is drawn as bare, delicate black branches. The tattoo is centred on a plain skin background with a dark sleeve and a light grey wall behind the arm.

Fine line Botanical Upper arm Tree Branches Foliage Trunk Bare tree Leaves

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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

Settle down, the lot of you, and pass the bread along before Uncle Tom eats the lot. I'll tell the story of the ash tree on the boundary wall, because somebody has to, and the vicar has said I may have five minutes if I stop before the cake.

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There were two farms either side of that wall, Hollin to the east and Clatterbrook to the west, and the Hollin men and the Clatterbrook men had not shared a pint in sixty years. Nobody remembered what it was over. Then one spring a jay dropped an ash key into the mortar where the stones had come loose, and by the time anyone noticed, the thing was taller than both barns. Old Ada Hollin wanted it cut. Her neighbour Joseph Clatterbrook said that if it came down, it would come down on his side, so he'd have the timber and she'd have the quarrel.

So they both went up the ladder with the same saw, one at dawn and one at dusk, and neither could bring himself to make the first cut. Winter came, and the tree stood there with its bare arms over both fields. In May the leaves came out on the west side first, because that was the sun's side, and Joseph stood under them and wept like a fool. Ada laughed till she had to sit down on the wall. The tree, being an ash and not a fool, went on doing what it had always done, which was to hold up its half of the sky and let the other half wait.

So here is my toast. Whatever the weather does on one side of the wall, it's the same root underneath. Raise a glass to the bride and groom, who grew up on opposite sides of a boundary that's now a garden fence, and may they have the sense to share a ladder.