A fleuron, also known as printers' flower, is a typographic element, or glyph, used either as a punctuation mark or as an ornament for typographic compositions. Fleurons are stylized forms of flowers or leaves; the term derives from the Old French: floron ("flower"). Robert Bringhurst in The Elements of Typographic Style calls the forms "horticultural dingbats". A commonly encountered fleuron is the ❦, the floral heart or hedera. It is also known as an aldus leaf.
A complex fleuron with thistle from a 1870 edition of Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect
Τypographic ornament in ancient city of Kamiros in Rhodes island, Greece
Decorated page from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales: The Wife of Bath's Tale
John Wycliffe's handwritten Bible, late 14th century
In typography, a dingbat is an ornament, specifically, a glyph used in typesetting, often employed to create box frames, or as a dinkus. Some of the dingbat symbols have been used as signature marks or used in bookbinding to order sections.
Poem typeset with generous use of decorative dingbats around the edges (1880s). Dingbats are not part of the text.