How to Write 栌 (lú) — Meaning “smoke tree; bracket (in architecture)”

Picture a smoke tree (栌) growing next to an old wooden door (卢 resembles a simple door frame). The smoke tree's leaves are used to make a yellow dye, so imagine the door being painted yellow. This visual helps connect the tree and the bracket meaning.

The left radical 木 must be written with a slanted stroke and a small hook at the bottom, not as a straight vertical line. The right part 卢 has a short horizontal stroke at the top, then a wide horizontal stroke below it, and the final stroke is a long vertical line. A common mistake is making the right side too narrow or forgetting the hook on the left.

栌 (lú) refers specifically to the smoke tree or an architectural bracket, while 杆 (gān) means a pole or rod, and 杈 (chà) means a fork in a tree or a pitchfork. Visually, 栌 has 卢 on the right, 杆 has 干 (gān), and 杈 has 叉 (chà), so the right-side component is the key differentiator.

栌 is not a common character in everyday speech but appears in botanical names like 黄栌 (huáng lú, smoke tree) and in architectural terms for wooden brackets (斗栱). It is also used in traditional Chinese medicine and dyeing, as the leaves of the smoke tree yield a yellow pigment.

Common words containing 栌 include: 黄栌 (huáng lú) — smoke tree; 栌叶 (lú yè) — smoke tree leaves; 栌木 (lú mù) — smoke tree wood.