The “gun” and “leaf” radicals look way too similar. I always get them mixed up for the same thing (gun). Which brings me to the fact that the “leaf” radical looks nothing like the mnemonic says. Maybe change one of the mnemonics?
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They have been working on an overhaul of the radical system for a while now, but they haven’t announced when it will be done. Hopefully they’ll improve stuff like this at that time.
Don’t worry, you’re not the only one. I actually added synonyms so that both of them are gun and leaf. At the end of the day, remembering the names of the radicals isn’t the most important thing in the world, especially if you don’t use them in the kanji mnemonics. So yeah, synonym away!
(On a side note, I totally think leaf radical looks more like a gun than gun radical haha)
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let’s think that leaf as one of this aquatic plants…
so they have the stem that ends up in a flat leaf on the water surface right?
Maybe that can help to tell it apart from the gun one
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I look them up when I get asked question about either of these 
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Same thing happened to me lol, and then I got the wrong a second time even though I tried to consciously avoid getting them wrong again 
How does changing the name make them less similar?
[The gun is a variant of 人, maybe you can remember it better that way?]
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better get used to paying attention to details. like, look at it twice, thrice, or as many times as it takes, and compare, because similarities are a red thread through the whole system.
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add the name of the other to each one
I dunno I would agree with Andi, you’re gonna find a lot of kanji look very similar (末、未、夫、失、矢、牛、午 all spring to mind) and you are going to need to get comfortable with differentiating very small differences, so you might as well start with gun or leaf. I think of gun as being a revolver with the cock lever on top, and the leaf being on a stem rather than the stem growing through the leaf. At the end of the day radicals only exist to help learn the kanji but if looking too similar is problematic, future kanji are going to be brutal.
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this one is kind of a nice example here, because the difference is part of the mnemonic, but this won’t always be the case. the system expects you to get used to it.
there’s a similar-kanj-addon here somewhere on the api forums. that one helps a lot.
Also add the same synonym to every radical, kanji, and vocab item so if you want to pass it, you just type that. I suggest “fish.”
But seriously though, just try letting the SRS work. Failing an item a few times isn’t the end of the world, in fact, it’s how it’s supposed to work. The repetition makes you remember. If you’re still having problems with it in the master/enlightened phase, consider adding a synonym.
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if we had perfect memory, we could just read a dictionary
back to back and be done with it 
this is exactly how i did it. 
get out of my brain!
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