Plants in tattooing most often mark a moment — a season, a loss, a transition, a devotion. Flowers dominate the category, but the range extends to trees, leaves, herbs, fruits, and fungi, each with its own iconographic history across cultures. A rose has accumulated more symbolic meaning than almost any other single image in Western tattooing. A lotus carries entirely different weight in Buddhist, Hindu, and Egyptian contexts. The articles here cover individual botanical subjects — where their symbolism originates, how it has been used in tattooing, and what distinguishes one reading from another.
All | Animals | Botanicals | Maritime | Mythology & Fantasy | Sacred & Spiritual | Subculture | Objects | Patterns
The rose is almost certainly the single most frequently tattooed image in Western tattooing. It has been part of the flash vocabulary since the earliest commercial tattoo shops, it crosses every major style from traditional to fine line, it appears on every body part, and it carries a range of meanings wide enough to accommodate almost any personal intention.