苞 (bāo): bud (of a flower)

Meanings

1 bud (of a flower)
2 calyx
3 (literary) lush, profuse

Characters

苞

bāo

bud, calyx; lush

Examples

花苞还没开放。

Huā bāo hái méi kāifàng.

The flower buds haven't opened yet.

玉米剥去外苞就能煮了。

Yùmǐ bō qù wài bāo jiù néng zhǔ le.

Once you peel off the outer husk, the corn is ready to cook.

Tips

usage

Most common in two compounds: 花苞 (huābāo, 'flower bud') and 含苞待放 (hánbāo dàifàng, 'in bud, about to bloom' — a classic chengyu also used metaphorically for a young woman just coming of age). 苞 also means the protective husk on corn or grain, and rarely the calyx of a flower.

memory

Note the 艹 (grass/plant) radical — 苞 is fundamentally botanical. The phonetic 包 (bāo, 'to wrap') gives both the sound and a mnemonic: a bud is leaves wrapped around a future flower.

Components

radical

艹 cǎo

grass; plant (top radical)

Top grass radical (3-stroke compressed form of 艸) — the indexing radical. Marks 苞 as botanical, putting it among 花 flower, 草 grass, 苗 sprout, 茎 stem. A bud is the wrapped beginning of a flower, hence the natural fit with the grass radical.

phonetic

包 bāo

wrap; bundle (here phonetic + semantic)

Bottom 包 supplies the sound bāo (exact match) and reinforces the meaning: a bud is a wrapped, enclosed package — petals folded over each other like a parcel. Same phonetic family: 抱 hug, 泡 bubble, 跑 run, 炮 cannon. The 'enclose / contain' imagery here is etymologically motivated, not accidental.