A small bird stood on a forking branch of the old tree.
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桠 rarely stands alone in modern Chinese. It means the fork where a tree branch divides, surviving mostly in 桠枝 (forked branch) and the plant name 五桠果. It is the wood radical 木 plus 亚 for the sound.
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Literary and botanical; in everyday speech a tree fork is usually called 树杈 instead.
