nopalli (FCbk11f170v)

This iconographic example, featuring the nopal cactus (nopalli, or nohpalli, with the glottal stop), is included in this digital collection for the purpose of making comparisons with related hieroglyphs. The term selected for this example comes from the text near the image in the Digital Florentine Codex. There is no gloss, per se. This example shows a nopal cactus with a central leader and two side branches. Each one has three yellow fruits (nochtli) with red blossoms. One nochtli on the left edge is cut off by the black box that was drawn around this painting. The branches have faint spots, which seem to indicate the locations of thorns. The contextualizing image shows two women sitting on their legs on the ground. They both have the neaxtlahualli hairstyle, and they wear the huipilli, the type with the rectangle at the base of the v-neck. The woman on the left is a healer; she is offering the woman on the right some medicine that derives from the nopalli (according to the text on the same page). Surprisingly, perhaps, the Spanish-language text on this page refers to the cactus as the “el árbol que se llama tuna,” the “tuna tree” (using the Spanish translation for nochtli).