Black and grey botanical tattoo of a thistle, bluebells and trumpet-shaped flowers on the inner upper arm, shaded with dotwork.

Wildflower sprig on an upper arm

Botanical · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows a cluster of wildflowers, including a thistle with a spiky head, a sprig of bluebells hanging from a thin stem, and a trumpet-shaped bloom with leaves. Fine outlines are combined with stippled dotwork shading to give the petals and seed heads texture. The design is entirely black and grey and climbs diagonally up the inner arm, with a black and white patterned backdrop behind it.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The bluebells are the problem. Every florist in Perthshire has told you the same thing: the wood on the far side of the burn is the only place they still grow wild, picking them is a nuisance, and cut bluebells last a day before their sap starts wilting everything else in the vase. You have a bucket, a pair of secateurs your grandmother left you, and a bride who has rung three times since breakfast.

Keep reading

The path climbs past a ruined mill, and the thistles along the ditch are already tall, their heads purple and bristling like something that does not want to be touched. You stop to look at them. Your cousin Morven used to say a thistle was the only honest flower, because it warned you before it hurt you. You take one for the buttonhole, cutting low, and the stem gives a small wet sigh.

Down in the hollow the blue is so thick it looks spilled. You kneel on your coat and cut only what you need, a handful of stems, and leave the rest bowed in the damp. Pale trumpet blooms grow near the water too, the ones your mother called Lent lilies, and you pick a few of those as well, knowing they will sulk in the vases.

Back at the marquee the bride holds the bluebells up to the light and counts them, then laughs and says they look like they are listening. You pin the thistle to your lapel without thinking. Nobody asks where the flowers came from, and you are glad, because the honest answer is a wood you have not told anyone about, and a thistle that let you pass without a fight.

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