Blueberries Emoji

A cluster of three ripe blueberries, usually shown with small green leaves. The Unicode proposal (L2/19-157) pointed out something the existing emoji set had missed: there was no blue fruit at all. Blueberries filled that gap.

The literal uses dominate: smoothie bowls, healthy eating content, baking, and fruit discussions. But 🫐 has picked up two notable secondary meanings. On Snapchat, posting 🫐 on your story means you're single — part of a fruit emoji relationship status code that teenage girls invented in 2016 to confuse boys. And in wellness content, 🫐 has become shorthand for "superfood" because blueberries have been the poster fruit of the antioxidant marketing wave since the early 2000s.

The blueberry industry took the emoji very seriously. The US Highbush Blueberry Council (USHBC) created an entire emoji marketing toolkit when 🫐 launched, calling it the continuation of the "Year of the Blueberry" and providing pre-written social media posts and high-res emoji files for growers and retailers. A national survey commissioned by the USHBC found that 46% of adults associated 🫐 with happiness and 19% with being hungry.

🫐 lives in three worlds. The biggest is food content: smoothie bowls, acai bowls, baking recipes, and farmers market hauls. On Instagram and TikTok, it appears alongside blueberry-heavy food photography, often paired with 🥣 and 🥤.

The second world is wellness and health. Blueberries have been marketed as a "superfood" since the early 2000s, and 🫐 inherits that identity. Nutritionists, fitness influencers, and supplement brands use it as visual shorthand for "this is good for you" without spelling it out.

The third world is the Snapchat fruit code. In 2016, groups of teenage girls started posting fruit emojis to indicate relationship status, specifically to confuse boys. 🍒 = in a relationship, 🍓 = can't find anyone, 🫐 = single, 🍍 = it's complicated, 🍌 = married. The trend went viral on Snapchat Stories and still surfaces periodically on TikTok.

The Unicode proposal for 🫐 (L2/19-157) made a simple but effective argument: blueberries are "a popular snack around the world" and there was no blue fruit in the entire emoji library. The proposal noted expected users would include "snack and beverage companies, farmers, bakers, proponents of healthy eating, and blueberry pickers." It was approved for Unicode 13.0 and Emoji 13.0 in March 2020.

But the real origin story of the blueberry itself is remarkable. Wild blueberries are native to North America and have been harvested by Indigenous peoples for thousands of years. The Wampanoag, Ojibwe, and Iroquois nations used them fresh, dried, and mixed with meat and fat to make pemmican. They also managed wild blueberry patches through controlled burning to stimulate growth.

Commercial cultivation didn't happen until 1916, when Elizabeth Coleman White, a New Jersey cranberry farmer, partnered with USDA botanist Frederick Coville to domesticate wild highbush blueberries. White recruited local "Pineys" to find bushes with the best berries in the Pine Barrens, and over five years they identified and crossbred over 100 varieties. The first commercial crop shipped in 1916. White also invented cellophane berry packaging and became the first woman to receive the New Jersey Department of Agriculture citation. From those New Jersey Pine Barrens experiments, a $6.4 billion US industry was born.

1. 1916Elizabeth Coleman White and Frederick Coville ship the first commercial cultivated blueberry crop from Whitesbog, New Jersey
2. 2019Unicode proposal L2/19-157 submitted for BLUEBERRIES emoji↗
3. 2020Approved in Unicode 13.0 and Emoji 13.0 (March 2020); USHBC declares 'Year of the Blueberry'↗
4. 2020USHBC launches Blueberry Emoji Toolkit for industry marketing↗
5. 2020Apple ships 🫐 in iOS 14.2 (November 2020)

• •Before 🫐, there was no blue fruit in the entire emoji library. Every other fruit emoji was red, yellow, orange, or green.
• •The US Highbush Blueberry Council created a full marketing toolkit when 🫐 launched, including pre-written social posts and downloadable high-res emoji files for growers and retailers.
• •On Snapchat, 🫐 means "single" as part of a fruit emoji relationship code invented by teenage girls in 2016 to confuse boys.
• •Wild blueberries have been harvested by Indigenous peoples in North America for thousands of years. The Ojibwe, Wampanoag, and Iroquois used controlled burns to manage wild blueberry patches.
• •Elizabeth Coleman White co-domesticated the blueberry in 1916 in New Jersey's Pine Barrens. She also invented cellophane berry packaging and became the first woman to receive the NJ Dept of Agriculture citation.
• •US blueberry production hit a record 789.5 million pounds in 2024, with a total economic impact of $9.1 billion annually and 61,676 jobs supported.
• •In a USHBC survey, 46% of adults said the blueberry emoji made them feel happy. 19% said hungry. Nobody reported a negative association.

• •Violet Beauregarde (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) — Roald Dahl's most iconic food punishment: Violet chews Wonka's experimental three-course-meal gum, hits the blueberry pie course, and inflates into a giant blueberry. The 2005 Tim Burton film made the scene even more dramatic with CGI. "Violet, you're turning violet, Violet!" is one of the most quoted lines from either adaptation.
• •USHBC's "Year of the Blueberry" — When 🫐 was approved in 2020, the US Highbush Blueberry Council celebrated it as a marketing milestone. They created a full emoji toolkit with pre-written social posts and downloadable high-res emoji files. It coincided with Pantone naming "Classic Blue" as Color of the Year and "Classic Blueberry" being named Flavor of the Year.
• •Snapchat Fruit Game (2016) — The viral trend where teenage girls posted fruit emojis as coded relationship status updates to confuse boys. 🫐 meant single. The code spread across Snapchat Stories in December 2016 and still resurfaces on TikTok.
• •Maine wild blueberries — Maine produces 100% of US wild blueberries, and the wild blueberry is the state's official berry. Wild blueberries have 33% more anthocyanins and twice the antioxidants of cultivated varieties.

• •U+1FAD0U+1FAD0. Part of Unicode 13.0 (2020), Emoji 13.0. No variation selector needed.
• •Shortcode: :blueberries::blueberries: on Slack and Discord. Note the plural — it's blueberries, not blueberry.
• •Renders as a cluster of three berries on most platforms. Apple shows them with small green leaves; Google's design is more minimal.

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