株 (zhū): measure word for plants and tre…

Meanings

1 measure word for plants and trees
2 trunk of a tree; stump

Characters

株

zhu

measure word for plants; tree trunk

Examples

院子里种了几株花。

Yuànzi lǐ zhòng le jǐ zhū huā.

A few flowers were planted in the courtyard.

路边有一株老树。

Lùbiān yǒu yì zhū lǎo shù.

There's an old tree by the road.

Tips

culture

株 appears in the famous idiom 守株待兔 (guard a tree stump waiting for a rabbit) — about a farmer who saw a rabbit crash into a stump and die, then waited there forever hoping it would happen again. It means to wait for a lucky break instead of working hard.

Components

radical

木 mù

tree; wood

Left tree radical — pictograph of a tree with branches above and roots below. Anchors the meaning: 株 is a counting word for plants and originally meant the trunk or stump of a tree. Indexes the character in the woody-plant family with 林 forest, 松 pine, 桃 peach, 梅 plum.

phonetic

朱 zhū

vermilion; cinnabar red

Right 朱 supplies the sound zhū with no drift, identical pinyin. 朱 itself originally pictured the red core of a felled trunk (a marking dot inside 木 indicating heartwood), so it adds a faint semantic flavor: a 株 is the standing stem of the tree where that red core lives. Same phonetic in 蛛 spider, 珠 pearl, 诛 to execute.