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莶 is a phono-semantic compound: the plant radical 艹 sits above the phonetic 佥 (xiān). Its traditional form 薟 uses the unsimplified component 僉. The character occurs almost exclusively in the binomial 豨莶 (xīxiān), which names the genus Siegesbeckia, a herbaceous plant long valued in traditional Chinese medicine for its anti‑inflammatory effects. Its meaning is so tightly bound to this botanical term that 莶 functions purely as specialized technical vocabulary.
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