Types of Palm Tree Tattoos

Tropical Palm Trees

• Tropical palm tree tattoos are tattoos that use palm trees to represent a beautiful beach or island scene. When designing a tropical palm tree tattoo, it helps to incorporate other tropical flora or fauna such as tropical birds, sand, water, fish and other plants.

  Tropical palm tree tattoos often use the sun and the horizon to further portray the notion of a beautiful tropical scene. Having the sun set or rise on the ocean's horizon is a nice way to flesh out any tropical tattoo design.

Desert Island Palm Trees

• Desert island palm tree tattoos often depict a single palm tree rising out of a small sandbar island somewhere in the ocean. This style of palm tree tattoo can represent several different things including solitude, loneliness or even solidarity or resolve, depending on the person's reason for getting the tattoo.

  For instance, a desert island palm tree with a skull in the sand next to the palm tree implies a lonely death or desperate, hard-to-escape situation.

  Desert island tattoos can also be promising and hopeful, however. For instance, adding a heart in the background of the tattoo can alter the meaning to make it represent an exclusive or everlasting type of love between two people. In hopeful variations such as this, one can add coconuts to the tree to represent a fruitful or fecund relationship.

Cultural or Personal Pride Palm Trees

• Certain locales and cultures have strong associations with palm trees, and people with strong connections to these places or with relevant backgrounds often use palm trees to represent these connections in their tattoos. For example, people with ties to Hawaii, Florida or California will often have a palm tree tattoo to express where they are from. One simple design to express this type of cultural or personal pride is to have a palm tree with the sun rising behind it and the name of the place beneath it.

  The date palm tree also has cultural and religious value throughout Persia and the Middle East and represents food, shelter, and other life-giving qualities. If you have an association with these areas you can consider using a date palm tree in your tattoo design.