Acaxochitla (Mdz30r)
This simplex glyph for the place name Acaxochitla (or, possibly Acaxochitlan) is a tuberous lobelia flower, ācaxōchitl), with an extra ācatl sign, in this case the reed-arrow, coming out of the top of the flower. The arrow is yellow with a brown eagle feather and a white down ball. The flower is red with many petals, a green sepal, and red roots. A small white tip protrudes from one of the petals. It is apparently a type of lobelia.
Stephanie Wood
The extra ācatl underlines the reading where this flower has a name beginning with āca-. The word ācaxōchitl has two parts, ācatl), or reed, and xōchitl), flower. The flower is a bright red, somewhat reminiscent of the cardinal flower or the flower of the canna lily. This flower has somewhat more detail than the same flower that stands for the place name, Acaxochic. It is possible that the place name once ended in -tlān, but the gloss just gives -tla[h], "place where there is an abundance of." [Frances Karttunen, "Critique of glyph catalogue in Berdan and Anawalt edition of Codex Mendoza," unpublished manuscript, used here with her permission.]
Stephanie Wood
acaxochitla. puo
Acaxochitla, pueblo
Stephanie Wood
c. 1541, or by 1553 at the latest
Stephanie Wood
flowers, lobelias, tuberous plants, stems, roots, arrows, darts, feathers, plumas, eagles, down balls, reeds, tules, carrizos, plantas, flechas
ācaxōchi(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
āca(tl), reed, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/acatl
xōchi(tl), flower, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/xochitl
-tla[h] (locative suffix; place where thing is abundant), https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tla-1
"Where There is Much Acaxochitl" (Same as Berdan and Anawalt.) [Frances Karttunen, "Critique of glyph catalogue in Berdan and Anawalt edition of Codex Mendoza," unpublished manuscript, used here with her permission.]
"Where There is Much Acaxochitl" (Berdan & Anawalt, v. 1, p. 168)
Donde Hay Mucha Acaxochitl (Flores de la Familia Lobelia)
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).