术 (zhú) · atractylodes (medicinal rhizome, used in Chinese…

Meanings

1 atractylodes (medicinal rhizome, used in Chinese medicine)

Characters

术

zhú

atractylodes (medicinal rhizome, used in Chinese medicine)

Examples

HSK 5

白术是一味常用的中药。

Báizhú shì yí wèi chángyòng de zhōngyào.

Bai-zhu is a commonly used Chinese herbal medicine.

HSK 7-9

这个方子里加了苍术。

Zhège fāngzi lǐ jiā le cāngzhú.

Cang-zhu has been added to this prescription.

Tips

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The zhú reading appears only in traditional-medicine plant names - 白术 and 苍术, both Atractylodes rhizomes used in herbal prescriptions. You will see it on herb-shop labels and in TCM recipes; everywhere else 术 reads shù.

history

The zhú reading is actually the older botanical sense - the character originally named the atractylodes plant, which is why the tree radical sits in the graph. When the traditional 術 'technique, art' merged into 术 in modern simplified writing, the everyday shù reading took over and zhú was relegated to a handful of fixed herb names.

Components

radical

木 mù

tree; wood

The tree radical is the indexing semantic and the botanical anchor. For the zhú reading the radical is doing its full job: this is the plant 术 - a perennial rhizome whose dried root enters Chinese medicine.

ideograph

丶 zhǔ

dot marker

The small dot is a differentiating marker, same as in the shù reading - abstract, no real-world depiction, just a position-marker keeping 术 visually distinct from 木 and 本.