acaxochitl (Mdz30r)

The acaxochitl is an acuatic plant that can be white or red, according to the Memoria que el Secretario de Estado y del Despacho de Justicia e Instrucción Pública presenta al Congreso de la Unión (1869, p. 194), which mentions: "el acaxochitl de flores blancas de la familia de las personadas y el acaxochitl de flores rojas, acaxochitl chichiltic de Hernández, lobelia splendens de De Candolle." Our online Nahuatl Dictionary entry for Acaxoch, the name, includes a reference to a woman of this name who is the wife of a tlahtoani in the Historia Tolteca Chichimeca. Another woman, doña Ana Acaxochitl was a central figure from the sixteenth century who was named in the seventeenth-century Metepec titles of the Toluca Valley (Garibay K. 1949), and a woman named Acaxochitl appears in the Book of Tributes published by S. L. Cline (1993, p. 142). In the Treatise on the Heathen Superstitions, Acaxoch was a way to refer to a deer. See: https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/acaxoch. So, there may be much yet to be revealed about this flower and this name. The flower is a bright red, somewhat reminiscent of the cardinal flower or the flower of the canna lily, but it is a tuberous flower in the lobelia family.