acaxochitl (Mdz30r)
This compound glyph stands has been carved from the place name, Acaxochitlan (here, leaving out a visual for the -tlan, locative suffix). The flower itself is a compound, for it has an arrow-like reed (acatl) protruding at the top of the flower (xochitl) to tell us that this is a "reed" flower. It is actually a tuberous flower of the lobelia family. The partial view of the acatl includes the emblematic brown and white feathers of the arrow or dart. The big red flower has many petals, tuberous greenery below that, and red roots at the bottom.
Stephanie Wood
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.
Stephanie Wood
Stephanie Wood
c. 1541, but by 1553 at the latest
Stephanie Wood
flower, flowers, reed, reeds, arrow, arrows, acasuchitl, acaxuchitl, acasochitl, feathers, plumas
acaxochi(tl), tuberous flower in the lobelia family, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/acaxochitl
Acaxoch, a personal name, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/acaxoch
aca(tl), reed, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/acatl
xochi(tl), flower, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/xochitl
tuberous flower in the lobelia family
Mexico City
la lobelia
Stephanie Wood
Codex Mendoza, folio 30 recto, https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/2fea788e-2aa2-4f08-b6d9-648c00..., image 70 of 188.
The Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, hold the original manuscript, the MS. Arch. Selden. A. 1. This image is published here under the UK Creative Commons, “Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License” (CC-BY-NC-SA 3.0).