Your primer to the puzzlingly popular language of flower emojis

In the midst of the covid-19 pandemic, Gurugram-based Mohit Mamoria, author and co-founder of trivia and quizzing company Arey Pata Hai, was the first person to send me a sunflower emoji in a WhatsApp conversation. “I was spending a week experimenting with the unexplored areas of the Unicode library. We have thousands of emojis at our fingertips, yet we socially restrict ourselves to a handful of regular ones,” Mamoria said back then. He wanted to find a new personality for his digital interactions. That sunflower felt brighter, happier, and bloomed more than a standard heart. It resonated so deeply that I adopted it as a digital identity, claiming in my bio and website that I was a part-time human and full-time sunflower.\

If you spend five minutes scrolling through Instagram profiles today, you will notice a shift in the digital landscape. The red heart, once the undisputed monarch of the emoji keyboard, is being quietly unseated by an entire botanical garden. As the heart emoji becomes increasingly fraught, too loud for some and too romantic for others, flower emojis have stepped in to provide a much-needed layer of nuance. They are little visual shortcuts that carry entire moods.

The internet has always been obsessed with shortcuts, but this one is powerfully tender and it’s put down roots. The “flower-behind-the-ear” look (filter) has become the undisputed uniform of Instagram stories, while bios are blooming with sunflowers, sakuras and tulips. In an overstimulated digital world where every message is scrutinised for tone and intent, flower emojis offer a “safe” middle ground that signals everything from minimal luxury to quiet strength. Even AI (ChatGPT) responds with sunflower emojis in discussions regarding gratitude, positivity and growth. Unlike the heart emoji, which often carries heavy expectations, the flowers provide sincerity without the worry of a high-stakes emotional commitment.

Agrima Thakur, a 30-year-old dentist from Pune, observes, “Flowers are everywhere in our digital conversations now, quietly doing the work that words sometimes cannot. While we may not be giving flowers in real life as often, we are certainly doing it online as a signal of strength and good vibes.”

A physical flower or bouquet is a grand gesture, but it is bound by geography and a shelf life. In contrast, flower emojis allow a sender to transmit good wishes that stay fresh and “vibe” indefinitely. As Surabhi Karandikar, a 32-year-old Toronto-based telecom engineer, says, “The digital exchange of flowers is visceral: it takes me mentally to a state of actually receiving a flower. Today, tenderness travels faster as an emoji than it does as an actual bouquet.”

While a real bouquet requires a vase, water and eventually a bin, the flower emoji asks for mere bytes of digital storage. For some, the flower emoji acts as a placeholder for our presence—during the troughs and crests, the celebrations and the funerals. “These emojis allow for holding space for someone without the clumsiness of poorly chosen words,” Karandikar adds.

Bengaluru-based psychiatrist Prerna Maheshwari, 30, views this as “emotional punctuation.” She notes, “Receiving a flower emoji makes us feel soft and settled. It is care without expectation. It acknowledges the moment without trying to fix it.” This “settled” feeling is the antidote to “heart-emoji fatigue.” For many, the red heart is linked to the phase you are in. It is comfortable for those who are married or in secure relationships, but potentially misinterpreted by others. A heart is also a questionnaire regarding which colour, which platform, which relationship, and which intensity.

Vidushi Kapoor, 37, a startup founder in Gurugram, shares, “I learned from the show Adolescence that younger people have a very different interpretation of colours in the heart emoji.” For her, colour is cosmetic, used to brighten a message or match a mood. But the many possible interpretations changes behaviour. You hesitate. You second-guess. You choose safer icons. You downgrade emotion to avoid accidental meaning. It’s probably why a lot of folks have shifted to the Korean finger heart emoji and hand heart emoji. “I reserve hearts strictly for friends and family to denote deep gratitude and love,” says Kapoor.

Mumbai-based cybersecurity professional Gautam S. Mengle, 39, admits to being old school: “A red rose still carries the weight of wedding bells, leading to a certain vehement unwillingness to use them. A friend from X used to send sunflower emojis regularly. When we finally met, she gifted me a real sunflower, making the moment special.”

For some in the older generation, aged 50 and above, specifically the ones who dominate family WhatsApp groups, the flower emoji is a sincere digital proxy for a blessing or a physical bouquet. Thakur shares from her personal experience that while fathers may remain emoji-avoidant, the mothers of that generation use them as a primary tool for social interaction. They often stick to the rose, the hibiscus, the yellow daisy/blossom and the favourite bouquet. This usage is earnest and unironic. Beyond the usual God-offering, to women in her family in their 60s, a flower emoji is a mark of grace: a way to speak to a child or school friends, with a gentleness that feels like a tap on a shoulder.

Meanwhile, for Gen Z, the floriography is more aesthetic and cinematic. Bengaluru-based web developer, Deepti S., 23, associates the tulip with “minimal, luxurious beauty,” and the wilted rose with feeling dejected and tired. For her, it suggests a slow, cinematic decay of main character energy. “My code did not compile ,” is her way to signal rejection without the drama of a broken heart.

The flower is also a tactical tool for survival in the digital trenches. Arey Pata Hai creator couple, Mohit Mamoria, 34, and Nipun Jain, 29, use the sunflower as a weapon of no-context warfare against trolls. Instead of arguing, they just send a sunflower. “It is a brilliant subversion of digital vitriol. Sending it to a troll leaves the receiver in a state of limbo, wondering if the sender is being nice or giving them an insult. The emoji is a shield of unbothered peace,” says Jain. “The purple hyacinth is my new obsession, aligning with the brand colours of our book.”

Online communication is causing a change in offline behaviour, known as the D2P (digital-to-physical) pipeline. Manasa Garemella, 37, a Delhi-based entrepreneur, notes, “I find myself picking up more sunflowers and becoming a flower person simply because I see the emoji so often.”

It has also translated into real-world trends, such as the birth of the Lego Botanical Collection and the viral floral claw clips dominating fashion feeds. I recently visited sunflower fields near Mysuru, and three friends have gifted me crocheted sunflowers in the past 15 months.

The heart will always have its place, especially for grand love, but the lighter, brighter flower emojis are a language of freedom and everyday care. Our screens are made of glass and metal, but our language seems to be turning back to the soil.

Shalaka Kulkarni (@shalakulkarni) is a Bengaluru-based author, writing at the intersection of culture and technology.