植
Character Story & Explanation
植 is widely used in China’s national greening campaigns — since the 1980s, March 12th is officially National Tree-Planting Day (植树节, zhíshù jié), where millions of citizens, students, and officials plant trees. The term 植树造林 (zhíshù zàolín, 'plant trees and create forests') appears in government policy documents dating back to the 1950s. It’s also standard in medical Chinese (e.g., 植入心脏起搏器, 'implant a pacemaker').
The character evolved from seal script (c. 3rd century BCE), where the left 木 clearly depicted a tree with roots and branches, and the right side 值 was already a standardized phonetic signifier. No oracle-bone form survives for 植 — it first appears reliably in Han dynasty texts as a verb meaning 'to set firmly in place', later narrowing to 'plant'.
Hello students! The character 植 (zhí) means 'to plant' — like planting a tree, seed, or even an idea in someone’s mind. It belongs to the 木 (mù) radical, which means 'tree' or 'wood', telling us right away that this character relates to plants and nature. With 12 strokes, it’s a medium-difficulty character at HSK Level 4 — common in environmental, agricultural, and metaphorical contexts.
Notice how 植 is made of two parts: left is 木 (wood/tree), and right is 值 (zhí), which sounds the same and originally meant 'value' or 'to be worth'. This phonetic component helps you remember pronunciation — not meaning, but sound. That’s how many Chinese characters work: one part hints at meaning (semantic), the other at sound (phonetic).
In daily use, 植 isn’t just about gardening — it appears in words like 植树 (to plant trees), 植入 (to implant, e.g., a chip or idea), and even in tech terms like 植入式广告 (embedded advertising). Think of it as ‘putting something down firmly into a base’ — whether soil, memory, or software!
Example Sentences
Common Compounds
Similar Characters — Don't Mix These Up
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