芽
め · me · JLPT N3 · noun
sprout
🌱 艹 grass + 牙 tusk: a green tooth poking up. Read me, like a potato's eye
The kanji puts the grass radical 艹 over 牙 (fang, tusk), so a sprout is a little green tooth breaking the soil. The reading me is also how 目 (eye) is read, and English calls a potato's sprouting spots its eyes. Related verb: 芽生える (mebaeru), to sprout.
芽 — grass radical 艹 + tooth 牙 (phonetic)
芽 is a semantic-phonetic compound. The grass radical 艹 on top signals plants, while 牙 ('tooth') below provides the sound 'ya'. The original sense is the tender sprout or shoot pushing up from a seed, like a small tooth emerging from the soil.