The grass radical 艸

Read cǎo, 6 strokes. It indexes 85 distinct HSK characters.

85HSK characters

6Strokes

#140Radical number

艸Glyph

Quick answer

What does the grass radical (艸) mean, and which characters use it?

Grass (艸, cǎo) is Kangxi radical 140, and it usually marks a character whose meaning is connected to grass. 85 distinct HSK characters are filed under it, the most common being 节, 花, 落. When you meet a new character carrying 艸, expect its sense to touch grass and let the other component hint at the sound.

How this radical works inside a character

Most characters built on 艸 follow the meaning-plus-sound pattern: 艸 sits on one side to signal the grass sense, and a second component supplies the approximate pronunciation. So you are rarely memorizing a whole new shape, you are recognizing grass plus a part you may already read. The list below is in corpus-frequency order, so the characters you will actually meet first are at the top: learn them in this order and the rest of the grass-radical family gets easier as you go.

All 85 grass characters 85 characters

#	Char	Pīnyīn	Strokes	HSK 3.0	HSK 2.0
1	节	jié	5	2	3
2	花	huā	7	1	3
3	落	luò	12	3	5
4	苦	kǔ	8	3	4
5	藏	cáng	17	6	5
6	药	yào	9	2	2
7	草	cǎo	9	2	3
8	营	yíng	11	3	5
9	获	huò	10	4	4
10	艺	yì	4	3	4
11	范	fàn	9	3	4
12	英	yīng	8	2	5
13	茶	chá	9	1	1
14	荣	róng	9	5	5
15	苗	miáo	8	7-9	5
16	菜	cài	11	1	1
17	蓝	lán	13	2	3
18	著	zhù	11	4	4
19	荒	huāng	9	7-9	6
20	荡	dàng	9	7-9	6
21	莫	mò	10	7-9	6
22	董	dǒng	12	7-9	6
23	葬	zàng	12	7-9	6
24	薄	báo	16	4	5
25	若	ruò	8	6	6
26	薯	shǔ	16	6	·
27	蓄	xù	13	7-9	6
28	蔑	miè	14	7-9	6
29	蕴	yùn	15	7-9	6
30	萄	táo	11	5	3
31	葡	pú	12	5	3
32	苏	sū	7	6	6
33	茄	jiā	8	6	·
34	蒙	méng	13	6	6
35	薪	xīn	16	6	6
36	芝	zhī	6	7-9	·
37	芦	lú	7	7-9	6
38	芽	yá	7	7-9	6
39	苍	cāng	7	7-9	6
40	茂	mào	8	7-9	6
41	茅	máo	8	7-9	·
42	茫	máng	9	7-9	6
43	荧	yíng	10	7-9	6
44	萌	méng	11	7-9	6
45	蓬	péng	13	7-9	6
46	苹	píng	8	3	1
47	蕉	jiāo	15	3	3
48	蔬	shū	15	5	5
49	菌	jūn	11	6	6
50	艾	ài	5	7-9	·
51	芒	máng	6	7-9	6
52	芬	fēn	7	7-9	·
53	芭	bā	7	7-9	·
54	芯	xīn	7	7-9	·
55	芳	fāng	7	7-9	·
56	苛	kē	8	7-9	·
57	茎	jīng	8	7-9	6
58	荆	jīng	9	7-9	·
59	荐	jiàn	9	7-9	5
60	荫	yīn	9	7-9	·
61	荷	hé	10	7-9	·
62	莲	lián	10	7-9	·
63	莽	mǎng	10	7-9	·
64	莹	yíng	11	7-9	·
65	菇	gū	11	7-9	·
66	菊	jú	11	7-9	·
67	菩	pú	11	7-9	·
68	萍	píng	11	7-9	·
69	萎	wěi	11	7-9	·
70	萝	luó	11	7-9	·
71	萧	xiāo	11	7-9	·
72	萨	sà	11	7-9	·
73	葱	cōng	12	7-9	·
74	蒂	dì	12	7-9	6
75	蒜	suàn	13	7-9	·
76	蔓	màn	14	7-9	6
77	蔼	ǎi	14	7-9	6
78	蔽	bì	14	7-9	6
79	蕾	lěi	16	7-9	·
80	藤	téng	18	7-9	·
81	藻	zǎo	19	7-9	·
82	蘑	mó	19	7-9	·
83	蘸	zhàn	22	7-9	·
84	苟	gǒu	8	·	6
85	葫	hú	12	·	6

tone 1 tone 2 tone 3 tone 4 neutral Order = corpus frequency, most common first · · = not in that scheme

Strokes and radical assignment come from the Unicode Han Database (Unicode 17.0.0, field kRSUnicode); the HSK levels and the frequency order are computed from the shipped HSK word lists. A small number of characters have a contested radical across dictionaries; the primary Unicode analysis is used throughout. Last verified 2026-07-24. See the full radical explorer or the characters-per-level reference.

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Drill the grass-radical characters on a schedule

This list is free to browse and self-test here, always. If you would rather practice recognizing these characters on your phone with spaced repetition, we recommend Wordbrush, our one disclosed pick. Never a gate on this page.

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