nochxochitl (FCbk11f197v)
This iconographic example features a flowering nopal plant, with emphasis on the flower of the fruit (nochxochitl). It 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 prickly pear cactus (nopalli), with many long, sharp thorns and six fruits (nochtli), each one with a flower (xochitl) at the top. The fruits appear on various branches of the cactus, and always at the top.
Stephanie Wood
The nochtli is by far the more common feature of the prickly pear cactus that appears in this digital collection, leaving the word nopalli to be fairly rare. Part of the reason for this is the use of the prickly pear fruit in place names, such as Tenochtitlan. Even glyphs of Tenochtitlan will show the whole nopalli plant. Nahuatl hieroglyphs for the popular personal name Nochhuetl show only the nochtli, as do glyphs for Nochco and Nochtepec. Nopal appears only once so far (as of November 2025) in this collection. The loose panels (pencas, in Spanish) that would be sold in the market and cleaned of their spines to be cut up for food can be found in the Florentine Codex. What are called “nopales” and eaten today as part of Mexican cuisine are these cut-up panels. The fruit (nochtli, in Nahuatl, and tuna in Spanish) are peeled and eaten like fresh fruit.
Stephanie Wood
nochsuchitl
nochxochitl
Stephanie Wood
1577
Jeff Haskett-Wood
flores, tunas, nopales, cactos
nochxoch(itl), the flower of the prickly pear cactus fruit, or flower of the nopal cactus, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/nochxochitl
la flor de la tuna del nopal
Stephanie Wood
Available at Digital Florentine Codex/Códice Florentino Digital, edited by Kim N. Richter and Alicia Maria Houtrouw, "Book 11: Earthly Things", fol. 197v, Getty Research Institute, 2023. https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/en/book/11/folio/197v/images/0 Accessed 16 November 2025
Images of the digitized Florentine Codex are made available under the following Creative Commons license: CC BY-NC-ND (Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International). For print-publication quality photos, please contact the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana ([email protected]). The Library of Congress has also published this manuscript, using the images of the World Digital Library copy. “The Library of Congress is unaware of any copyright or other restrictions in the World Digital Library Collection. Absent any such restrictions, these materials are free to use and reuse.”
