The Chinese word 向日葵 (xiàngrìkuí) for "sunflower" is a logical compound formed from three characters: 向 (xiàng) meaning "to face/toward," 日 (rì) meaning "sun," and 葵 (kuí), a general term for certain plants of the Malvaceae family (like mallow). Thus, the word literally means "the *kuí* plant that faces the sun," which is a direct and descriptive reflection of the flower's well-known heliotropic behavior, where its head tracks the sun's movement across the sky. This formation exemplifies a common Chinese lexical pattern where words are built from meaningful components that describe an object's key characteristic or function.