U+861E "蘞" CJK Unified Ideograph-# Unicode Character
U+861E "蘞" CJK Unified Ideograph-# is a Chinese character used primarily in classical and literary contexts, where it represents a type of wild vine or creeper plant, often specifically identified as the bitter vine or the climbing plant known in English as the "vine of the bindweed" family, and it carries connotations of bitterness or astringency derived from the plant's taste. In historical usage, this character appears in ancient texts such as the "Classic of Poetry" (Shijing), where it is associated with the gathering of edible or medicinal herbs, and it is occasionally used in modern Chinese as a rare surname or in specialized botanical terminology. The character combines the "grass" radical (艹) on top with a phonetic component, reflecting its categorization among plants in the Chinese writing system. Overall, U+861E is a seldom-used but culturally significant glyph, embedded in traditional Chinese references to nature and herbal medicine.