What 穃 means
Its strongest dictionary link is 榕, the banyan character. The Japanese record is different: it leads to a disputed place-name spelling.
The documented trail starts with a reference work first issued in 1951, which printed 穃原 for the Okinawan place name Yōbaru. Municipal and land records use 榕原, so Japanese investigations treat 穃原 as a mistaken rendering, not a settled historic spelling. Annex 7 of JIS X 0208:1997, a Japanese character standard, records the form with that place-name trail.
Is 穃 a ghost kanji?
In Japanese, yes; Chinese dictionaries list it as a variant of 榕. A ghost kanji is a form kept in a character reference despite a doubtful source or use. Japanese references give 穃 the reading yō, roughly like “yo” with the o held longer. The entries show different reference traditions, not an all-purpose reason to swap the glyphs.
It reads like a character-reference or place-name discussion, not a familiar everyday message.
For Yōbaru, local records use 榕原; 穃原 is the disputed spelling.
What it means when someone sends it to you
4 readingsDon't confuse it with
1Combination ideas
2Questions people ask
1Why does 穃 show as a box on some devices?
Because that device's fonts have no glyph for it. The character is still correct and still copies correctly — the box is a missing glyph, not a broken character.
How to type 穃
穃\7A43Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.