natsukaze

Of course there is a meaning in chinese characters.

Once you get that 木 is a tree (which is pretty easy to see), you might figure that 林 is woods and 森 is a forest, even though 森 will look wildly complicated for someone who never really looked at chinese characters. People are learning to read chinese like this for thousands of years, and instead of remembering 12 individual brushstrokes for 森 you just need to remember that it's 3 trees.