What 藢 means
It is glossed as 紫芋, “purple yam” or “purple taro.”
The earliest source for 藢 is 《玉篇》, a Chinese character dictionary completed in 543. The later 《集韻》 also preserves the same plant gloss.
紫芋 is the documented gloss. It links 藢 to that plant name, but does not show that 藢 descends from the separate characters 紫 or 芋.
Specialized and bookish; it fits a discussion of the plant or a text that contains the character.
Should I use 藢 in a normal message? Usually not: without plant context, the reader may not know what it refers to.
Questions people ask
1Is 藢 an emoji?
No. It is a Han character, and its visible shape is drawn by the font in use.
How to type 藢
Windows (Word)
Alt+XType 85E2, then Alt+X to get 藢.
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-85e2”.
Linux
Ctrl+Shift+UType 85e2, then Enter or Space.
HTML
藢CSS
\85E2Codes and encoding1 code points
HTML decimal
藢
HTML hex
藢
CSS content
content: "\85E2";
Each escape is closed by the next backslash; a trailing space is needed before a literal hex digit.
URL encoded
%E8%97%A2
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.