September birth flower tattoo ideas and meaning

Aster and morning glory, described properly

An aster is a head rather than a single flower. The center is a flat disc of tiny yellow florets, and around it sit one or two rings of ray florets, each one a narrow strap with a blunt or slightly notched tip. The rays are typically purple, blue, pink or white, and they radiate almost flat. Stems branch freely and carry many heads at once, with narrow lance shaped leaves along them.

A morning glory is one funnel. Five petals are fused into a continuous flared trumpet, so the rim is a smooth circle broken only by five shallow points where the seams reach the edge. Those seams run back down to the throat, where they meet in a pale five pointed star. The stem twines, always in the same direction, and the leaves are heart shaped with a deep notch at the base.

Details that keep each one recognizable

• The five seams radiating from the morning glory throat, drawn as light lines only.
• A visible yellow disc at the aster's center rather than a solid dot.
• Aster rays kept narrow and strap like, not teardrop shaped like a daisy's.
• The twining vine and heart shaped leaves, which identify morning glory at any size.
• Tightly spiralled buds along the vine, which read well even at 5 mm.

Petal counts and what survives

Cut the aster's rays. A real head with 35 narrow rays drawn at 4 cm leaves gaps under half a millimeter, and those close within five to eight years, at which point the flower reads as a shaded circle. Sixteen to twenty rays, varied slightly in length, keeps the starburst open for decades. Leave the disc as a stipple or a ring of small dots instead of solid black, because solid centers spread outward fastest.

The morning glory needs almost no compromise. Four centimeters across the trumpet works, and the flower still reads at 3 cm if the artist drops the interior seams and keeps only the rim and the throat. The vine is the part to watch: a twining stem drawn thinner than the flower outline will fade first, so ask for the same needle weight throughout.

Styles that suit September

Morning glory has a long history in Japanese work, where it is drawn with a heavy outline and flat color and appears in summer panels alongside dragonflies. That treatment ages better than anything else and works from 8 cm up. Fine line morning glory vines are the most requested version now, usually as a band around a wrist or an ankle. Asters suit dotwork, where a stippled disc and clean rays give the flower depth without heavy fill.

Combinations that work

• Morning glory vine as a wrist or ankle band, fine line, flowers at 3 to 4 cm
• Single morning glory in Japanese style with bold outline, 8 to 12 cm
• Aster with sixteen rays and a stippled disc, 4 to 6 cm, inner forearm
• Spray of three asters on branching stems, black and grey, 10 to 14 cm
• Morning glory vine twining through a row of other birth flowers

Fitting September into a family piece

September is an easy month to place because both flowers are small and flat. An aster sits comfortably next to a daisy or a violet without a scale problem, and the morning glory vine can be used as the connective tissue of the whole design, running behind the other months and tying separate stems into one shape.

One warning about drawing both September flowers. Most months look better with a single flower chosen rather than both included, and September is where that matters most, because an aster head and a morning glory trumpet sitting side by side compete for the same attention. In a set of four or five children, give each month one flower. Save the pairs for a standalone piece about your own month.