藚

It is an old name for a water plant.

Chinese dictionary entries connect 藚 with 澤瀉, a medicinal water plant commonly called water plantain. Other glosses use 水舄 or 牛脣, which do not consistently identify one exact species. In the graph, 艹 marks a plant and 𧶠 supplies sound; 續 and 讀 are related through sound structure, not meaning.

How old is the plant name?

It appears in a pre-Qin poetry collection.

The Shijing is an early Chinese poetry collection. Its line “彼汾一曲，言采其藚” describes gathering 藚 beside a bend of the Fen River. The Han-era dictionary Shuowen defines the character as 水舄 and cites the same verse.

Later glosses diverge: the Erya dictionary calls 藚 牛脣, and medical texts preserve 藚斷 as a drug name. “Water plantain” is a practical identification, not proof that each old text meant the same species.

How do I type 藚?

Enter its reading in an input method, then select 藚.

Mandarin pinyin uses xù; Cantonese Jyutping listings give zuk6, and Japanese references give おもだか. In the Cangjie Chinese input method, which selects characters by component shapes, the listed sequence is TGWC.