A fleuron or printers' flower is a typographic

Typography

Typography is the art and technique of arranging type in order to make language visible. The arrangement of type involves the selection of typefaces, point size, line length, leading , adjusting the spaces between groups of letters and adjusting the space between pairs of letters...

 element, or glyph

Glyph

A glyph is an element of writing: an individual mark on a written medium that contributes to the meaning of what is written. A glyph is made up of one or more graphemes....

, used originally as an ornament for typographic compositions — often, for example, to compose borders on title pages of historic books. Fleurons are stylized forms of flowers or leaves; the term derives from the Old French

Old French

Old French was the Romance dialect continuum spoken in territories that span roughly the northern half of modern France and parts of modern Belgium and Switzerland from the 9th century to the 14th century...

 word floron for flower.http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/fleuron Robert Bringhurst

Robert Bringhurst

Robert Bringhurst is a Canadian poet, typographer and author. He is the author of The Elements of Typographic Style – a reference book of typefaces, glyphs and the visual and geometric arrangement of type...

 in The Elements of Typographic Style

The Elements of Typographic Style

The Elements of Typographic Style is a book by Canadian typographer, poet and translator Robert Bringhurst. Originally published in 1992 by Hartley & Marks Publishers, it was revised in 1996, 2001 , 2002 , 2004 , 2005 , and 2008...

calls the forms "horticultural

Horticulture

Horticulture is the industry and science of plant cultivation including the process of preparing soil for the planting of seeds, tubers, or cuttings. Horticulturists work and conduct research in the disciplines of plant propagation and cultivation, crop production, plant breeding and genetic...

 dingbats

Dingbat

A dingbat is an ornament, character or spacer used in typesetting, sometimes more formally known as a "printer's ornament" or "printer's character"....

."

Fleurons were crafted the same way as other typographic elements were: as individual metal sorts

Sort (typesetting)

In typesetting by hand compositing, a sort is a piece of type representing a particular letter or symbol, cast from a matrix mould and assembled with other sorts bearing additional letters into lines of type to make up a forme from which a page is printed.-See also:* History of western typography*...

 that could be fit into the printer's compositions alongside letter and numbers. This saved the printer time and effort in producing ornamentation. The fact that the sorts could be produced in multiples meant that printers could build up borders with repeating patterns of fleurons.

Two fleurons are included in the Unicode

Unicode

Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...

 dingbats block: floral heart, U+2766 (❦) and rotated floral heart bullet, U+2767 (❧). Another fleuron is found in the miscellaneous symbols block: reversed rotated floral heart bullet, U+2619 (☙).

Digital typefaces featuring fleurons

Fleurons are still designed for use in digital typefaces. The following is a list of typefaces, available online, that include fleurons.

• Hoefler Text
  Hoefler Text
  Hoefler Text is a contemporary serif Antiqua font that was designed for Apple Computer to demonstrate advanced type technologies. Hoefler Text was created to allow the composition of complex typography; as such it takes cues from a range of classic fonts, such as Garamond and Janson.Designed by...
  
  , by Hoefler & Frere-Jones
  Hoefler & Frere-Jones
  Hoefler & Frere-Jones is an influential type foundry in New York City, run by designers Jonathan Hoefler and Tobias Frere-Jones. With both their similarities and their likings it was only a matter of time that both their paths would come across and would have became business partners. Both Hoefler...
  
   http://www.typography.com/fonts/font_features.php?featureID=36&productLineID=100010
• ITC Bodoni Ornaments, at Linotype http://www.linotype.com/151058/itcbodoniornamentspi-font.html
• Fleurons Granjon, a Lanston font at P22 type foundry
  P22 type foundry
  P22 type foundry is a digital type foundry from Buffalo, New York, that develops and markets typefaces for the Macintosh and Windows platforms. The name P22 has no specific significance and was used prior to the type foundry as a label for various art projects including an ambitious mail art...
  
   http://www.p22.com/Lanston/granjon.html
• Monotype Goudy Sorts, at Linotype http://www.linotype.com/156004/monotypegoudysortspi-font.html
• Printers Fleurons, by Gerald Giampa, a Lanston font at P22 type foundry
  P22 type foundry
  P22 type foundry is a digital type foundry from Buffalo, New York, that develops and markets typefaces for the Macintosh and Windows platforms. The name P22 has no specific significance and was used prior to the type foundry as a label for various art projects including an ambitious mail art...
  
   http://www.p22.com/lanston/Giampa/FleuronsC.html
• Requiem
  Requiem (typeface)
  Requiem is an old style serif typeface designed by Jonathan Hoefler in 1992 for Travel & Leisure magazine. The typeface takes inspiration from a set of inscriptional capitals found in Ludovico Vicentino degli Arrighi's 1523 writing manual, Il Modo de Temperare le Penne. Italics are based on the...
  
  , by Hoefler & Frere-Jones
  Hoefler & Frere-Jones
  Hoefler & Frere-Jones is an influential type foundry in New York City, run by designers Jonathan Hoefler and Tobias Frere-Jones. With both their similarities and their likings it was only a matter of time that both their paths would come across and would have became business partners. Both Hoefler...
  
  http://www.typography.com/fonts/font_features.php?featureID=43&productLineID=100020