Lesson 17 · Foundational Components

Grass, Bamboo, Grain: 艹 / 竹 / 禾

A plant-family trio: three distinct pictographs, all vegetation, all extremely common component slots. 艹 covers plants in general, 竹 is specifically bamboo, and 禾 is specifically a grain stalk (rice, wheat, millet). Between them they build tea, flowers, pens, and the word "and."

Your three new components

艹
 
cǎo
grass, plant (component form)
3 strokes
竹
𥫗 (top)
zhú
bamboo
6 strokes
禾
 
hé
grain, cereal plant (rice/wheat/millet stalk)
5 strokes

Quick recall — click each card to flip it:

艹
cǎo — grass, plant (component)
竹
zhú — bamboo
禾
hé — grain, cereal plant
艹 is the compressed top-form of 艸, "grass." Wiktionary describes 艸 as a pictograph of two sprouting plants side by side, doubling the single-plant pictograph 屮 (chè —). As a standalone character 艸 is essentially obsolete in modern text; almost everywhere you'll actually meet this idea, it appears as the flattened three-stroke radical 艹 sitting on top of another component. Kangxi radical 140. (Wiktionary: 艹)
竹 also shape-shifts on top: 𥫗. A pictograph of two bamboo stalks with drooping leaves. Like 火→灬 in Lesson 7 and 言→讠 in Lesson 12, 竹 takes a compressed "head" shape — 𥫗, Kangxi radical 118 — when it sits on top of another component, as in today's 笔. Same meaning, same component, a shape reserved for that position. (Wiktionary: 竹)
禾 vs 木: look closely. Both are five-or-six-stroke plant pictographs built around a vertical trunk with a crossbar, and it's easy to blur them together at a glance. The difference: 禾 (grain) adds a diagonal stroke bending off the top-left of the vertical — Wiktionary's picture of a heavy grain head drooping over, the way a ripe stalk of wheat or rice bends under its own weight. 木 (tree, Lesson 1) stays symmetric, no droop. (Wiktionary: 禾)

Stroke order

艹 — 3 strokes

Stroke order diagram for 艹, 3 strokes
艹 — 3 strokes
▶ watch animated

竹 — 6 strokes

Stroke order diagram for 竹, 6 strokes
竹 — 6 strokes
▶ watch animated

禾 — 5 strokes

Stroke order diagram for 禾, 5 strokes
禾 — 5 strokes
▶ watch animated

Examples using these components

Starting with 艹: 茶 is the character behind every teahouse and tea box in China:

茶chátea

艹+余=茶

艹 (grass/plant, semantic — the tea plant) is semantic; 余 (yú, "surplus, remaining" today) is phonetic only. The character is a graphical simplification of the older 荼 (tú, "bitter plant"), with one stroke dropped from 余's original form. (Wiktionary: 茶)

花 follows the same semantic-phonetic pattern:

花huāflower

艹+化=花

艹 (grass/plant) is semantic; 化 (huà, "to transform, to change" today) is primarily phonetic, though it can also be useful to think of a flower as something a plant "turns itself into". 花 also doubles as a verb, "to spend" (money or time). (Wiktionary: 花)

竹 builds 笔 — this one is fully semantic, both halves carry meaning:

笔bǐpen, pencil, writing brush

𥫗+毛=笔

An ideogrammic compound: 竹 (bamboo, semantic) over 毛 (máo, "hair, fur", semantic), because traditional Chinese writing brushes were made of a bamboo shaft with an animal-hair tip. Both pieces contribute meaning; neither is phonetic. (Wiktionary: 笔)

禾 builds one of the most common words in the language, reusing 口 all the way back from Lesson 1:

和héharmony, peace; and

禾+口=和

Here the roles flip from 茶/花: Wiktionary marks 禾 (grain) as the phonetic element — it lends its own sound, hé — while 口 (mouth, semantic, from Lesson 1) supplies the meaning, gesturing at harmony through voice or song. (Wiktionary: 和)

Stroke order for today's characters

茶 — 9 strokes

Stroke order diagram for 茶, 9 strokes
茶 — 9 strokes
▶ watch animated

花 — 7 strokes

Stroke order diagram for 花, 7 strokes
花 — 7 strokes
▶ watch animated

笔 — 10 strokes

Stroke order diagram for 笔, 10 strokes
笔 — 10 strokes
▶ watch animated

和 — 8 strokes

Stroke order diagram for 和, 8 strokes
和 — 8 strokes
▶ watch animated

Check your recall

艹 is the compressed top-form of which standalone character?

竹 takes which compressed shape when it sits on top of another component?

Compared to 木 (tree), 禾 (grain) adds:

花 (huā) means:

In 笔 (𥫗+毛), the relationship between the two pieces is:

In 和 (禾+口), which piece is the phonetic element?

Go further

Etymology sources for every character above are linked inline. For the rigorous version of any of them, including the full phono-semantic analysis of 和, see the Outlier Dictionary of Chinese Characters.

Out in the world: 茶 rarely stands alone on a menu — 红茶 (hóngchá, "black tea," literally "red tea" — 红, hóng, "red") and 绿茶 (lǜchá, "green tea" — 绿, lǜ, "green") are the two you'll see most. 花店 (huādiàn, "flower shop," built entirely from glossary characters — 店 from Lesson 14) is a sign you can now read in full, and 竹子 (zhúzi, "bamboo," also fully buildable — 子 from Lesson 2) labels the plant itself in parks and gardens. 禾 rarely stands alone in modern text, but it's the seed component behind a whole family of crop and farming characters still to come. 和 is one of the most common characters in the language — you'll meet it constantly as "and" linking two nouns, long before you meet its rarer "harmony" sense.