About

Leaf Fluttering in Wind Emoji (🍃) is an emoji depicting a green leaf fluttering in the wind, as if plucked off a branch while still alive. In 2020, TikTokers popularized using the emoji to represent marijuana.

Origin

The Leaf Fluttering in Wind emoji was first added to Unicode version 6.0 in 2010, before being added to Emoji 1.0 in 2015. In the years immediately following its release the emoji didn't have a specific use, mainly used in posts and text talking about gardening, nature, and the seasons.

Demand for a marijuana leaf emoji is not uncommon, leading people to find various alternatives. For example, on April 21st, 2020, Twitter^[1] user @jeremyburge shared a graph showing that searches for "weed" on Emojipedia were up massively that month (shown below).

Other alternative emojis for marijuana include the Broccoli Emoji (🥦), often in combination with the Gust emoji (💨).

Code for Marijuana

It's unknown exactly when people began using the 🍃 emoji to represent marijuana, but people began using it as such the year after it was added as an emoji. For example, a number of posts using the emoji when talking about weed can be found on Twitter starting in 2011 (examples shown below).

The practice began increasing in popularity starting around 2018. For example, on December 6th, 2018, the Twitter^[2] account for Vice shared an article announcing weed's legalization in Michigan, using the leaf emojis in the post (shown below).

Spread

TikTok

The use of the emoji as a symbol for marijuana was heavily popularized on TikTok over the course of 2020 leading into 2021. For example, videos under the hashtag #🍃 have collected over 350 million combined views, with some examples uploaded as early as May 2020 (early examples from the hashtag shown below, left and right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References