Demonstration of Student Interest and Dedication

At the end of a semester students will often seek extra work (not having done the regular assigned work) or some other means of enhancing their grade. But never before has one of them offered to show their interest in the subject area and their dedication to the course material by having themselves tattooed. Now having been down the botanical tattoo route before, and having had several botanical tattoo images sent to me that a respectable blog simply cannot repost, this request was approached with some trepidation. However in this case, having stumbled upont this image somewhere, they merely were amused by the notion. It figures, no real interest, no real dedication, pretty average, but they were searching for botanical images, so that may count for something. Sort of an interesting pair of tattoos though, chocolate and vanilla.

Talk about a stimulating tattoo!

The Phactor gets asked to identify lots of botanical specimens, often from just an image. This arrived via email thanks to some anonymous correspondent, and they simply asked if this was botanically accurate? Well, to know that you have to determine what was being illustrated. And that isn’t too difficult, this is clearly Coffea arabica, coffee, and it not only is botanically accurate but copy of a classic botanical illustration. But this is almost a new one on the Phactor. Only once before has the identification been based on an image tattooed into someone’s dermis. One of my recent students had a hibiscus on her shoulder blade. Are gardeners going to start sporting tattoos of their favorite plant? Are botanists going to start bearing some indelible record of their research organisms? Who knows where this may lead, perhaps more students in my plant taxonomy class! Perhaps more tattoo pictures!