Cacahuaxochitl (MH725v)
This black-line drawing of the simplex glyph for the personal name cacahuaxochitl (“‘Cacao’ Flower”) is attested here as a woman’s name. It shows a frontal view of a group of three flowers, each with three visible petals.
Stephanie Wood
Many flowers are portrayed with three upper petals in the glyphs that come from the Matrícula de Huexotzinco, almost as though it was the generic way to draw a flower when attention to detail was not required. The cacahuaxochitl is really an herb, and not the flower from the cacao tree. According to Wikipedia: “Quararibea funebris has common names including huyu, flor de cacao, madre de cacao, coco mama, swizzle stick tree, cacahuaxochitl or cacaoxochitl, rosa de cacao, rosita de cacao, tepecacao, funeral tree, flor de tejate and tejate.” Tejate is a beverage that includes the “flor de cacao” as one of its ingredients.
Stephanie Wood
1560
Jeff Haskett-Wood
flores, nombres de mujeres
cacahuaxochi(tl), an herb, the “cacao” flower, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/cacahuaxochitl
Flor de ‘Cacao’
Stephanie Wood
Matrícula de Huexotzinco, folio 725v, World Digital Library, https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_15282/?sp=529&st=image
This manuscript is hosted by the Library of Congress and the World Digital Library; used here with the Creative Commons, “Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License” (CC-BY-NC-SAq 3.0).
