蕉

Grass radical on top — paired sprouts, the cap for anything green and growing. Carries the meaning of 蕉: the banana plant is botanically a giant herb, not a tree, so the grass-family marker is exactly right. Sits with 茶 tea, 草 grass, 莲 lotus, 菠 spinach — all built by stacking 艹 over a phonetic to name a plant.

Bottom 焦 supplies the sound directly — same jiāo with no shift. 焦 itself depicts a bird over fire, the picture of scorching, but in 蕉 the scorched-bird imagery has no semantic role; it's pure phonetic borrowing. The most common compound 香蕉 'banana' literally reads as 'fragrant 蕉'. Same phonetic in 礁 reef and 樵 firewood.