Kiwi Fruit Emoji

A kiwifruit cut in half, showing its bright green flesh and ring of tiny black seeds. One of the more visually distinctive fruit emojis because of that cross-section design. The fruit itself has one of the best origin stories in food marketing: it was called "Chinese gooseberry" until 1959, when New Zealand exporters renamed it "kiwifruit" because Americans wouldn't buy something called a gooseberry, and U.S. tariffs on melon imports were too high for the alternative name "melonette."

🥝 is used for the fruit, smoothie and health content, New Zealand references, and green-themed aesthetics. It's a quiet emoji. No innuendo, no political subtext, no viral memes. Just a fuzzy fruit that contains 1.7x more vitamin C than an orange and somehow became a NZ$4.1 billion industry.

Approved in Unicode 9.0 (2016) as U+1F95DU+1F95D KIWI FRUIT. One of the newer fruit emojis, arriving six years after the original batch of 🍎🍊🍋🍌.

🥝 lives in a few specific lanes.

Health and nutrition. Kiwi is a real superfood: more vitamin C than oranges, high in potassium, and it contains actinidin, an enzyme that breaks down protein. Health content creators use 🥝 in smoothie bowl posts, nutrition threads, and "foods you should be eating" lists.

New Zealand. "Kiwi" means three things: the bird, the fruit, and New Zealanders themselves. 🥝 appears in NZ travel content and as a lighthearted national symbol. In New Zealand, the fruit is always called "kiwifruit" (one word) to distinguish it from the bird.

Green aesthetics. The bright green interior makes 🥝 popular in color-themed posts: green smoothie bowls, nature content, and spring aesthetics. It pairs well with other green emojis.

Chill vibes. Dictionary.com notes that 🥝 has taken on a "chill" or relaxed connotation. No drama, no subtext. Just vibes.

The kiwifruit has one of the greatest rebrand stories in food history.

The fruit is native to central and eastern China, where it was called mihoutao ("macaque fruit") because monkeys loved it. The earliest recorded description dates to the 12th century Song dynasty. For centuries, it grew wild in Chinese forests, mostly ignored by humans.

In 1904, Mary Isabel Fraser, the principal of an all-girls school in New Zealand, brought back some seeds from China. A farmer named Alexander Allison planted them near Whanganui, and they bore fruit for the first time in 1910. New Zealanders thought it tasted like gooseberry and started calling it the "Chinese gooseberry."

The name was a marketing disaster. Americans didn't want "gooseberry" anything. The alternative name "melonette" would trigger U.S. import tariffs on melons. So in 1959, Jack Turner of Turners & Growers renamed it "kiwifruit" after the kiwi bird, reasoning that American servicemen who'd been stationed in the Pacific during WWII would associate "kiwi" with New Zealand. The name stuck. By 1970, all NZ exports used it.

Today, New Zealand's kiwifruit industry is worth NZ$4.1 billion in annual revenue through Zespri, the world's largest kiwifruit marketer, selling in over 50 countries. A fruit that was renamed to avoid a tariff became a national export powerhouse.

1. 1904Mary Isabel Fraser brings Chinese gooseberry seeds from China to New Zealand. First fruit in 1910.
2. 1959Jack Turner of Turners & Growers renames the fruit 'kiwifruit' to avoid U.S. tariffs and improve marketing appeal.↗
3. 1997The New Zealand Kiwifruit Marketing Board rebrands to Zespri, now the world's largest kiwifruit marketer.↗
4. 2016Approved in Unicode 9.0 as U+1F95D KIWI FRUIT. Joins the emoji keyboard alongside avocado, cucumber, and other food emojis in Emoji 3.0.

• •Kiwifruit is native to China, where it was called mihoutao ("macaque fruit") because monkeys loved it. China is still the world's largest producer, even though the fruit carries a New Zealand bird's name.
• •A single schoolteacher, Mary Isabel Fraser, brought kiwifruit seeds from China to New Zealand in 1904. That single trip created a NZ$4.1 billion industry.
• •Kiwifruit has 1.7x more vitamin C per 100g than oranges. The gold kiwi variety reaches 161mg per 100g, the highest of any commonly eaten fruit.
• •The fruit was renamed from "Chinese gooseberry" to "kiwifruit" in 1959 because Americans wouldn't buy "gooseberries" and the backup name "melonette" would've triggered U.S. melon import tariffs.
• •Zespri, the world's largest kiwifruit marketer, generated NZ$4.1 billion in revenue in 2024 and sells in over 50 countries. All from a fruit that was growing wild in Chinese forests a century ago.
• •The brown, fuzzy exterior of kiwifruit resembles the kiwi bird's feathers, which is why the fruit inherited the bird's name. Both are small, brown, and fuzzy.
• •Kiwi contains actinidin, a natural enzyme that breaks down protein. This is why kiwi can tenderize meat and why your mouth sometimes tingles after eating it.
• •New Zealand is only the world's third-largest producer of kiwifruit (after China and Italy), but controls about 30% of the global export market through Zespri's single-desk system.
• •Eating two kiwis one hour before bed may improve sleep quality. A widely-cited Taipei Medical University study found participants who did this for 4 weeks fell asleep 35% faster and slept 13% longer.
• •The kiwifruit is one of the most recently domesticated major fruits in the world. Commercial cultivation only began in the early 20th century, while apples, pears, and grapes have been cultivated for millennia.

• •Flight of the Conchords: The New Zealand musical comedy duo routinely leaned on kiwi-ness (the bird, the fruit, and the nationality) as running gags. Their HBO show spread Kiwi-tinged humor to US audiences.
• •Kiwi Kiwanis: The 1988 New Zealand children's animated short about an anthropomorphic kiwi fruit. A cult nostalgia hit for any Kiwi under 45.
• •Zespri marketing: NZ's Zespri built a global kiwifruit brand through the 2000s using animated characters "Kiwi Brothers" in Japan, the single-desk export system, and SunGold variety launches. One of the more successful single-commodity marketing campaigns in global food.
• •Katy Perry's "California Gurls": Candy-colored fruit imagery throughout the video includes halved kiwis as part of the visual language. The "fruit girl" aesthetic it helped create still informs TikTok's cherry-girl / strawberry-girl cycles.
• •Kiwi (bird) as All Blacks mascot: The kiwi bird is NZ's national symbol, and the emoji sometimes functions as rugby-team shorthand during All Blacks matches.