The Florentine Codex, Book 11, f. 127v, describes the camotli as s cylindrical, ball-like, twisted root vegetable. It is edible raw or cooked in a pot. The plant creeps like a bean. There is a small camotli that is called the camoxalli. Another variety is the xicamoxihuitl, nicknamed xicama, jícama in Spanish and English today, with white flesh, juicy, and edible raw.
Sahagún, Bernardino de, Antonio Valeriano, Alonso Vegerano, Martín Jacobita, Pedro de San Buenaventura, Diego de Grado, Bonifacio Maximiliano, Mateo Severino, et al. Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España (Florentine Codex), Ms. Mediceo Palatino 218–20, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence, MiBACT, 1577. Available at Digital Florentine Codex/Códice Florentino Digital, edited by Kim N. Richter, Alicia Maria Houtrouw, Kevin Terraciano, Jeanette Peterson, Diana Magaloni, and Lisa Sousa, bk. 11, fol. 127v. Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2023. https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/en/book/11/folio/127v?spTexts=&nhTexts= . Accessed 16 November 2025.
See an image that represents camotli in the Visual Lexicon of Aztec Hieroglyphs, ed. Stephanie Wood (Eugene, Ore.: Wired Humanities, 2020-present).
puxcamotli = a variety of camote (poxcauh- = moldy)
Frances F. Berdan and Patricia Rieff Anawalt, The Codex Mendoza, 1992, vol. 1, 200).