Black fine line drawing of two ginkgo leaves on long curved stems, shaded with parallel lines on a white background.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Two ginkgo leaves on stems

Fine line · Black and grey · Flash

The drawing shows two ginkgo leaves on slender stems, one large leaf above and one smaller leaf to its right. The veins are rendered as fine, evenly spaced black lines that fan out from the base of each leaf, with the stems drawn as solid tapering strokes. The subject is set centrally on a plain white background, with no colour or shading beyond the linework.

Fine line Botanical Leaf Stem Vein

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Hal, the ginkgo by the lych gate dropped its whole crop in one night this week, and when I walked out at six the path was a fan of gold so thick Mrs Pryce's terrier refused to cross it. I have meant to write since the funeral, but every time I sat down the lamp guttered or the kettle boiled over, and the letter never got further than 'Dear Hal'.

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You'll remember the saying Father used to give, that a ginkgo leaf splits down the middle into two halves that never quite meet, so you can't wish on it the way you can on a clover. He said it was the tree being honest. I lifted one off the wet stones this morning and counted the veins the way you taught me, from the stalk outward. Forty-one, all running straight to the rim, none crossing, none stopping short.

The surveyors from the county came on Tuesday with their measuring wheels and wanted the tree felled for the new bypass. Nobody in the village argued. Ada Lusk stood in front of the trunk with a flask and said she would sit there until Michaelmas, and the young constable, who is nineteen and carries his notebook like a prayer book, wrote down her name and went off red in the face.

So the tree stays, for now, and I have promised myself I will post this before the wind takes the rest. Come home at Christmas if you can. Bring the pressed leaf from the back bedroom, the one with the stalk still on, and we will lay it beside the one I found and see whether the two of them look any more like they belong together side by side than they did apart. Your sister, Nell.