艹

marks a character as involving grasses · Kangxi radical 140 · variant of 艸

marks a character as involving grasses, herbs, flowers, and plants generally — including plant names, plant parts, and things made from vegetation

The old graph was 艸, simply two copies of 屮, a picture of a single small plant with a stem and a pair of leaves pushing up out of the ground. Doubling it turned one sprout into a patch of growing things — grass and low vegetation. In modern printing the two sprouts are squashed into the flat lid 艹 that sits across the top of a character: the long horizontal is the ground line, and the two short strokes crossing it are what is left of the two stems poking through. You can see it over 蔬 vegetables, 蕊 flower stamens, and 蕈 mushroom, and it stays on top even in surnames and phonetic borrowings like 萨 and 苌.

艹 at a glance

Meaning

marks a character as involving grasses

Strokes

3

Characters

435

Role

Contributes meaning

Kangxi radical

140

Variant of

艸

Characters with 艹 (119 of 435)

Frequently asked questions