Meaning & readings
wisteria
On’yomi トウ、ドウ
Kun’yomi ふじ
Nanori ぞう、と、ふじゅ
Origin
The character 藤 combines a grass radical at the top with the component 滕 below it. The grass radical indicates this is a plant, while 滕 originally represented something that climbs or spreads. Together they picture a climbing plant — specifically the wisteria vine, which grows upward and spreads across structures. The formation makes visual sense: you see the plant marker, then the idea of growth and movement, which captures how wisteria actually behaves in nature.
Components
- 艹
- 滕
Common words
- 葛藤 かっとう conflict; complication
Easily confused with
These look alike but are unrelated in meaning — check the stroke that differs.
Reference
- Strokes
- 18
- Kangxi radical
- 140
- Formation type
- Compound ideographic (combined meanings)
- Grade
- Jōyō (secondary school)
- Frequency rank
- #291 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 1
- Unicode
- U+085E4