The white flower emoji is basically the internet’s gold star sticker—cute, polite, and very “you did amazing, sweetie.” It comes from the Japanese hanamaru tradition, where teachers mark excellent work with a little flower doodle or stamp. So when you drop 💮, you’re giving someone an A+ with extra sparkle, whether they nailed an exam, baked the perfect loaf, or finally sent that terrifying email.
On Apple/iOS, it’s a crisp white, scalloped blossom outlined in bright red, with a red label in the center that shows the white Japanese text “おめでとう” (omedetō, “congratulations”). It looks like a paper rosette—award ribbon vibes minus the ribbon tails—and people recognize it instantly by that tidy red-and-white contrast. You’ll see it all over studygram captions, progress updates, and “mission complete” posts, often buddying up with ✨, 💯, or ✅.
Beyond wholesome praise, it has range. It can be sweetly supportive, gently formal, or used with a wink to give someone a “wow, you did the bare minimum… but I’m proud of you anyway” sarcastic trophy. It’s also a go-to in anime/manga and J-culture chats when you want to serve kawaii approval. And no, it’s not the pink cherry blossom—this is the stampy one that screams “congrats” in red and white.
Definition
A Japanese ideograph used in schools as a mark of a job extremely well done. An ideogram (pictogram or ideograph) is a symbol or picture used to communicate a concept or idea. This particular ideograph is of a white flower that means brilliant homework. Stamped or written by a teacher on a student's homework to give extreme praise and impressive intelligence.
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Emoji History The emoji code/ image log of changes.
This emoji first appeared in OSX / iOS after the iOS 5 update.
A++++. I wouldn't expect these to be handed out very frequently. An extreme honor. Potentially a cherry blossom given their cultural importance in Japan.
Proposed Unicode Information & Notes
Unicode Category
Abstract Concepts
Unicode Subcategory
Japanese School Grade Symbols
Names & Annotations
WHITE FLOWER = brilliant homework Temporary Notes: ❀ U+2740 WHITE FLORETTE?; Symbol that a teacher writes on homework for "brilliant!" (花丸)
Symbol Information
U+1F4AE proposed
Proposal Identifier
e-B7A
Character Mapping/Crosswalk Notes
DoCoMo
[花丸]
KDDI
#278 花丸 U+E4F0 SJIS-F6C9 JIS-764B
Softbank
[花丸]
Emoji Character Encoding Data
Emoji Code Version
iOS 5 - Current
UTF-8 Unicode Character(s)
💮
UTF-8 Character Count
1
Character(s) In Input
AppleColorEmoji Font (available in OSX/iOS)
💮
Decimal HTML Entity
💮
Hexadecimal HTML Entity
💮
Hex Code Point(s)
1f4ae
Formal Unicode Notation
U+1F4AE
Decimal Code Point(s)
128174
UTF-8 Hex (C Syntax)
0xF0 0x9F 0x92 0xAE
UTF-8 Hex Bytes
F0 9F 92 AE
UTF-8 Octal Bytes
360 237 222 256
UTF-16 Hex (C Syntax)
0xD83D 0xDCAE
UTF-16 Hex
d83ddcae
UTF-16 Dec
55357 56494
UTF-32 Hex (C Syntax)
0x0001F4AE
UTF-32 Hex
01F4AE
UTF-32 Dec
128174
Python Src
u"\U0001F4AE"
PHP Src
"\xf0\x9f\x92\xae"
C/C++/Java Src
"\uD83D\uDCAE"
Emoji Character Encoding Data (equivalent or similiar)