In the Kangxi Dictionary, there are 580 characters (out of 49,030) to be found under this radical.

土 is also the 29th indexing component in the Table of Indexing Chinese Character Components predominantly adopted by Simplified Chinese dictionaries published in mainland China.

Kangxi radical 33 (士 "scholar") is merged to this radical as an associated indexing component of the principal indexing component 土 in mainland China.

In the Chinese wuxing ("Five Phases"), 土 represents the element earth.

As an independent character it is one of the Kyōiku kanji or Kanji taught in elementary school in Japan.