Eight-Petalled Florette

No hidden meaning: it is a pretty flower ornament. Next to a name or a message it adds a soft, decorative touch, much like a sticker in a notebook. Whatever mood it carries comes from the words beside it.

It belongs to the fleurons, the small flower and leaf shapes printers have long used to mark section breaks, frame titles and fill space. ❁ entered Unicode in 1993 with the Dingbats block, which was largely based on the Zapf Dingbats ornament font designed by Hermann Zapf.

How do people use it?

As decoration and as a divider. It turns up in profile bios, usernames, captions and headings, either framing a word (❁ spring ❁) or set in a row (❁ ❁ ❁) to break up text, the way printers used ornaments between sections.