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莨 is a phono-semantic compound: the radical 艹 ('grass/plant') marks the semantic field, and 良 provides the pronunciation. It was coined to distinguish plants in agricultural and botanical taxonomy, with pronunciation shifting the meaning. When read làng, it refers to plants with toxic alkaloids, such as scopolia, which can be poisonous or used medicinally; in other readings (e.g., liáng), it names the dye yam (薯莨) historically prized for textile dyeing. This structure encodes both category and sound to differentiate plant species.
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