Weed Emojis: The Code Behind the Tree, the Leaf and the Fire

There is still no cannabis leaf on the emoji keyboard, so people borrowed a whole garden instead. A tree, a loose leaf, a flame and a puff of smoke can all mean weed in a text or a post, and a reader without the key sees only a nature lover with strong feelings about campfires.

Parents, platforms and even the DEA have tried to read that code. The meanings shift from one group chat to the next, but a core set has held steady for years, and most of it grew out of slang older than the smartphone.

Key takeaways

• There is no official cannabis leaf emoji, so stoners use trees, leaves, flames and smoke instead.
• Much of the code comes from older slang, such as trees for buds, fire for top flower and gas for pungent strains.
• The marijuana emojis on the DEA's chart are a palm tree, a smoke cloud, a flame, a Christmas tree and a shamrock, Westword reported.
• On that chart, a maple leaf stands for drugs in general, not weed alone.
• A 2023 review of 11 social media sites found that every one of them banned cannabis sales.
• People disagreed on whether the same emoji felt positive, neutral or negative 25% of the time in a 2016 study.

Borrowed symbols for a missing leaf

Emoji are approved by the Unicode Consortium, the nonprofit that sets the standard behind the emoji on every phone, and its list still has no cannabis leaf. That gap left users to improvise, and they mostly reached for symbols that already matched existing slang. Calling buds "trees" was common before emoji were standard on American phones around 2011, so the evergreen tree became one of the best-known weed emoji picks, while "fire" for top-quality flower turned into a flame and "gas" for strong, pungent strains into a fuel pump.

Other picks are plain pictures of the act. A puff of smoke, the emoji officially named "dashing away," stands for a big exhale, and the leaf fluttering in wind is the closest thing on the keyboard to a cannabis leaf. Others are pure wordplay: broccoli for a dense green nug, a loudspeaker for "loud" flower with a strong smell and a plug for a dealer. Unicode supplies only a sample black-and-white sketch and is not a designer nor purveyor of emoji images, so each phone maker draws its own, and the same leaf can look lush on one screen and sparse on another.

Common weed emoji meanings

Most weed emoji meanings hold steady from app to app, though context still decides each one. These seven turn up again and again in texts, captions and seller posts:

Combinations matter more than any single symbol. A tree and a flame together usually praise a strain, while the same tree next to a price or a plug reads as an offer, and a puff of smoke after a time of day often sets up a session.

The DEA emoji guide

The best-known attempt to decode the system came from the Drug Enforcement Administration. Its one-page chart, "Emoji Drug Code Decoded," was made to give parents, caregivers and educators a better sense of how emojis are being used around illegal drugs, and it sorts drug emojis into groups such as marijuana, cough syrup, dealer advertising and high potency. A note at the bottom calls the list a representative sample from DEA investigations, not a complete code.

The DEA emoji guide drew wide coverage, and not all of it was kind. According to Denver's Westword, the marijuana emojis on the chart are a palm tree, a smoke cloud, a flame, a Christmas tree and a shamrock, and all but the palm tree are common enough for pot talk, even if the agency missed a few. A red maple leaf stands for any drug at all. Most of the chart deals with prescription drugs such as Adderall, oxycodone and Percocet, Westword noted, and one group covers fake prescription pills. Other groups cover meth, cocaine, mushrooms, heroin and MDMA, plus signals for dealers and large batches. Since nearly every symbol on it also has an everyday meaning, the chart works better as a conversation starter for parents than as proof of anything.

The unexamined day is a wasted opportunity. Reflect on what you did, what you learned, and how you can improve.

John Dewey

Strains you can spell in emoji

Some of our strain names translate straight into emoji, which makes them easy to share in a group chat. Two of them spell themselves:

• Lemon Tree 🍋🌳, a Lemon Skunk and Sour Diesel cross at 28% THC, tastes of fresh lemon with a tropical sour edge and a light diesel note, and it finishes in 65 to 70 days.
• Watermelon Z 🍉, a Watermelon and Original Z cross at 28% THC, tastes of fresh watermelon and grapes with a candy-sweet exhale, and it is ready in 63 days.

Both lean slightly indica at 55%, with a happy lift that settles into calm, which suits a lazy afternoon of swapping flame emojis with friends.

Platforms, filters and coded posts

Emojis also do a practical job for sellers, since most social networks forbid selling cannabis outright. A 2023 review of the policies on 11 social media sites, from Facebook and Instagram to TikTok and YouTube, found that all of them banned sales, nine banned paid advertising and only four banned unpaid promotion, such as posts by ordinary users. Snapchat and Tumblr were the two without a ban on paid ads, and Discord, Reddit, Snapchat and TikTok were the four that also barred unpaid promotion. The review looked at written policies, so it says little about how strictly each site enforces them. The authors called those rules ambiguous and warned that they may help cannabis marketing reach underage users.

Those bans give sellers a reason to talk in symbols. A menu of flames, trees and plugs is harder for keyword filters to catch than the word "weed," though moderators and parents learn the code over time, and the code keeps moving as they do.

April 20 in emoji

Every April 20, feeds fill with 420 emojis, most often a stack of leaves, flames and puffs of smoke. Keycap digits 4️⃣2️⃣0️⃣ spell out the number itself, and since no clock face shows 4:20, the four o'clock face 🕓 is the closest anyone gets. The day traces back to a group of California high school students in the 1970s, and how 420 became cannabis culture's favorite number is a story of its own. In the United States the date and the number line up as 4/20, while much of the world writes the date day first, as 20/4, so the number matches the date best on an American calendar.

Reading emojis in context

Emoji are slippery even without a secret code. In a 2016 study by University of Minnesota researchers, people who rated the very same emoji image disagreed on whether it felt positive, neutral or negative 25% of the time, and the gaps grew when the emoji came from different phone platforms, which the authors saw as significant potential for miscommunication. That is reason enough to read weed emojis with care:

• One flame or tree on its own usually means just what it shows.
• Repeated stacks, prices or meetup times beside the emojis are a much stronger signal.
• A plug beside prices or a menu usually means a seller.
• Codes change by region, school and app, so an old chart can miss new slang.
• A calm, direct question works better than a fight over one emoji.

Where adult use is legal, a tree emoji between friends is small talk, but selling cannabis without a license is illegal in every state, so a seller's emoji menu means trouble in any state.

Small pictures, old slang

Weed emojis fill a gap the official keyboard never closed, and most of them grew out of older slang: trees for buds, fire for top flower, gas for pungent strains and a plug for a source. The DEA's chart and the platform rules show how seriously others take the code, yet a single emoji still proves very little on its own. Read the stack, the context and the person, and the meaning usually comes through.

Barney's Farm has been developing premium cannabis genetics since the 1980s, with over 40 Cannabis Cup wins. Explore our full seed catalog and find strains bred for every climate and skill level.