What 蕗 means
In Japanese, 蕗 names the butterbur plant called fuki.
Early Japanese plant dictionaries, 本草和名 and 和名抄, preserve フフキ, an older reading of the name, roughly “fu-fu-ki.” These are reference books of plant names; フフキ is written in katakana, a Japanese syllabary.
In Mandarin Chinese, 蕗 (lù), roughly “loo” with a falling tone, is recorded as a former word for licorice. This is a historical Chinese dictionary sense, not the Japanese plant reading.
Don't confuse it with
1款冬
Some older Japanese sources used 款冬 as a name for fuki, but Japanese dictionaries mark that plant identification as mistaken.
Combination ideas
2Fuki's edible flower stalk, gathered in early spring as a seasonal delicacy.
Butterbur stalks simmered in soy sauce.
Questions people ask
1Why does 蕗 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 蕗
Windows (Word)
Alt+XType 8557, then Alt+X to get 蕗.
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-8557”.
Linux
Ctrl+Shift+UType 8557, then Enter or Space.
HTML
蕗CSS
\8557Japanese input method
Type ふき, then choose 蕗 from the Japanese conversion candidates.
Codes and encoding1 code points
HTML decimal
蕗
HTML hex
蕗
CSS content
content: "\8557";
Each escape is closed by the next backslash; a trailing space is needed before a literal hex digit.
URL encoded
%E8%95%97
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.