Botanical term for a single petal of a flower. In everyday conversation, 花びら (はなびら) is more common.
Cherry blossom petals are dancing in the wind.
この花は花弁が6枚ある。
This flower has six petals.
花弁 is the ordinary compound for 'petal'; 弁 alone in this sense is a technical, bound morpheme rarely used by itself.
Standard modern kanji spelling.
Outdated kanji form using 瓣; learners may encounter it in older texts.
Compound of 花 (flower) and 弁 (petal, valve). The kanji 弁 is a simplified form of 瓣, which originally depicted a melon's segments and later came to mean 'petal'.