What 菺 means
菺 names the hollyhock; Mandarin reads it roughly “jyen.”
The Erya, an early Chinese glossary, glosses 菺 as 戎葵. Its commentator Guo Pu identifies the plant as 蜀葵 and compares its flower with 木槿, a different flowering plant.
Later dictionaries retain the hollyhock identification. In these glosses, 戎葵 and 蜀葵 are plant names, not alternate ways to write 菺.
Why does 菺 look different in different fonts?
Different fonts can draw the same Han character with different stroke shapes.
As of 2026-09-11, font and locale may change the way this Han character is drawn; its encoded identity remains 菺.
Dictionary-style and botanical: expect it in a plant name or a historical plant gloss.
Questions people ask
1Why does 菺 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 菺
菺\83FACodes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.