How to Write 萱 (xuān) — Meaning “daylily”

Imagine a mother (萱堂, an honorific for mother) sitting in a sunny field of daylilies (萱草). The top part 艹 looks like grass, and the bottom part 宣 sounds like "sun" because it contains the sun radical 日, reminding you that daylilies bloom in the sun.

Start by writing the grass radical 艹: horizontal, vertical, vertical. Then write 宣: first the roof (点, 横钩), then the inner part 亘 (横, 竖, 横, 横, 竖, 横). Be careful to make the bottom of 宣 look like a sun (日) with an extra horizontal stroke on top, not like 旦.

Visually, 萱 has a roof (宀) and a sun-like shape inside, while 荷 has the component 何 (何) on the right side, and 荸 has 孛 (bèi) on top. Meaning-wise, 萱 means daylily, 荷 means lotus, and 荸 refers to water chestnut. In usage, 萱 appears in honorific terms for mother, while 荷 and 荸 are common plant names.

The character 萱 is not in the HSK list and is rarely used in daily conversation, but it appears in literary contexts and traditional Chinese medicine. The word 萱草 means daylily, a plant often associated with forgetting worries, and 萱堂 is a respectful classical term for one's mother or her living quarters.

Common words containing 萱 include: 萱草 (xuān cǎo) — daylily; 萱堂 (xuān táng) — mother (honorific); 萱苏 (xuān sū) — daylily and perilla (medicinal plants).