Pencil line drawing of a broad tree with a cloud-like canopy, twisting branches and long curling roots, a botanical tattoo design with no body placement shown.

Tree with spreading roots design

Botanical · Black and grey · Flash

A pencil sketch of a large tree with a full, cloud-like canopy of leaves and a trunk that splits into twisting branches. Its roots curl and spread downward in long, looping lines, with some small leaves scattered around the crown. The drawing uses fine, even outlines and light shading on a plain white background, in black and grey only.

Botanical Tree Root Branches Leaves

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The rain had set in over the Thursday market at Cold Ashby before the bells, and by noon the stallholders had given up calling their prices. Hannah Pell kept her apples under tarred cloth and watched the gutters carry leaves down to the drain. Her grandson Tom wanted to know why the great oak in the churchyard had let its roots out under the cobbles, when everyone knew roots belonged under soil.

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"Because it was thirsty," said Hannah, "and it had been waiting a long while for a wet day." Her own grandmother had told her that the oak had walked down from the hill the winter the river froze, dragging its roots like a man drags a sack, and had split its trunk in two so that one half could keep watch over the church and the other could keep an eye on the market. Tom said that was nonsense. He said it while sheltering under the same cloth.

A cart came grinding up from the water meadows, its wheels sunk to the hub, and the carter's wife climbed down to buy the last of the russets. She paid in coppers fished out of a wet purse. Hannah gave her an extra apple for the child on her hip, the way her grandmother had once given one to her, and nobody remarked on it.

By dusk the rain had stopped and the cobbles shone like pewter. Tom knelt by the churchyard wall and pressed his palm to the roots where they came up through the stones. They were warm, as if something under the town were breathing slowly in its sleep. He went home and told his mother that the oak had drunk its fill, and that the market would stay dry for the rest of the week.