艸 Radical 140 — grass, herbs, plants
cǎo (third tone, dipping)
grass, herbs, plants
Radical 1406 strokes3 characters
Also written 艹 — the same radical in a different position inside the character.
Where the shape comes from
Two shoots side by side, each pushing a pair of leaves out of the ground — 屮 written twice. Nobody writes the full 艸 any more: on top of a character it is the flat three-stroke 艹, and it heads almost every plant name in the language, along with what is made from plants: 花, 草, 茶, 药, 菜, 苹.