nochtli (MH485r)
This black and white drawing of an element for the fruit (nochtli) of the nopalli cactus has been carved from the compound sign for the personal name, Cuauhnochtli. The upright fruit is rounded and spiny. It has something of a crown-shaped flower blossom at the top.
Stephanie Wood
This nochtli can be compared to various glyphs from the Codex Mendoza (see below). As those show, the word nochtli can represent just the fruit (called tuna in Spanish) or it can be represented appearing on the entire nopalli (prickly pear cactus).
Stephanie Wood
1560
Xitlali Torres and Stephanie Wood
tunas, nopales
nochtli, fruit of cactus, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/nochtli.
Matrícula de Huexotzinco, folio 485r, World Digital Library, https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_15282/?sp=45&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).