What 蕒 means
It names several bitter greens and lettuce-like plants.
The earliest known written use of 蕒 appears in a record about the Chinese state of Wu from the late third century: 蕒菜 names unusual plant growth described as a sign of future events. Dictionaries explain the Wu-era use as 苦苣 (“bitter lettuce”); names such as 苣蕒 and 水苦蕒 also connect the character with edible greens and medicinal plants.
Questions people ask
1Why does 蕒 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 蕒
Windows (Word)
Alt+XType 8552, then Alt+X to get 蕒.
Windows
Win+Rrun charmap for the full table, or use the emoji picker's Ω symbols tab (Win + .).
macOS
Control+Command+SpaceOpen the character viewer and search “cjk unified ideograph-8552”.
Linux
Ctrl+Shift+UType 8552, then Enter or Space.
HTML
蕒CSS
\8552Chinese input methods
To type 蕒, enter Mandarin pinyin mǎi and select 蕒; Zhuyin uses ㄇㄞˇ, and Cangjie uses TWLC.
Codes and encoding1 code points
HTML decimal
蕒
HTML hex
蕒
CSS content
content: "\8552";
Each escape is closed by the next backslash; a trailing space is needed before a literal hex digit.
URL encoded
%E8%95%92
1
On screen
1
Code points
1
JS .length
3
UTF-8 bytes
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.