菇 (gū): mushroom (bound form, used in c…

Meanings

1 mushroom (bound form, used in compounds)

Characters

菇

gū

mushroom

Examples

我喜欢吃香菇。

Wǒ xǐhuan chīxiāng gū.

I like eating shiitake mushrooms.

这道菜里有蘑菇和金针菇。

Zhè dào cài lǐ yǒu mógu hé jīnzhēngū.

This dish has button mushrooms and enoki mushrooms.

草菇产自亚热带。

Cǎogū chǎn zì yà rèdài.

Straw mushrooms are produced in subtropical regions.

Tips

usage

菇 is a bound form — it almost never stands alone. It appears as a suffix in mushroom names: 蘑菇 mógu (button mushroom, the generic term), 香菇 xiānggū (shiitake), 金针菇 jīnzhēngū (enoki), 草菇 cǎogū (straw mushroom), 杏鲍菇 xìngbàogū (king oyster). For 'a mushroom' on its own, use 蘑菇.

memory

Top is the 艹 (grass) radical, signalling a plant; bottom is 姑 (gū, aunt — phonetic only). Same shape rule as in 菠 bō (spinach), 苹 píng (apple), 茄 qié (eggplant).

Components

radical

艹 cǎo

grass; plant (top radical)

Top grass radical, the three-stroke compressed form of 艸. Indexes 菇 in the botanical family alongside 花 flower, 草 grass, 茶 tea — anything that grows from soil. Mushrooms aren't truly grass but the radical groups all soft growing things together for filing purposes.

phonetic

姑 gū

aunt; girl (here phonetic)

Bottom 姑 supplies the sound directly — gū to gū, no tonal shift. The same phonetic 古 sits at the core of 古 old, 故 reason, 估 to estimate, 苦 bitter, all reading gū/gǔ/gù/kǔ. Picked purely for sound; the aunt-meaning doesn't carry over to mushrooms.