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iczotl.

Headword: 
iczotl.
Principal English Translation: 

a type of yucca (Yuca aloifolia) (see Karttunen), or wild palm (Clavijero, 1780)

Orthographic Variants: 
iczōtl
IPAspelling: 
iksoːtɬ
Frances Karttunen: 

(I)CZŌ-TL a type of yucca (Yuca aloifolia) / palmera de las montañas… la fibra de ese árbol se utilizaba en el tejido de paños (S) This is attested in the compound ICZŌXŌCHI-TL.
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 96.

Attestations from sources in English: 

The iczotl is pictured and described in the Florentine Codex, Book 11.
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. 114v. Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2023. https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/en/book/11/folio/114v . Accessed 12 November 2025.

See an image that represents iczotl in the Visual Lexicon of Aztec Hieroglyphs, ed. Stephanie Wood (Eugene, Ore.: Wired Humanities, 2020-present).

icçotilmanamacac = the seller of palm leaf fiber capes (central Mexico, sixteenth century)
Fr. Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain; Book 10 -- The People, No. 14, Part 11, eds. and transl. Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble (Santa Fe and Salt Lake City: School of American Research and the University of Utah, 1961), 75.

Melton-Villanueva discusses the prevalence in Nahuatl testaments of the altepetl of San Bartolomé Tlatelolco, in the valley of Toluca, where people requested burial near the copal trees. Other "burial trees" were the cypress (tlatzcan), the date palm (icçotl, iczotl), and the pirul.
Miriam Melton-Villanueva, The Aztecs at Independence: Nahua Culture Makers in Central Mexico, 1799–1832 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2016), 110.

Icçotilmaxixipetztli = finely woven yucca fiber capes (16th century, Mexico City)
Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex, Book 9—The Merchants, trans. Charles E. Dubble and Arthur J.O. Anderson (Santa Fe, New Mexico; The School of American Research and the University of Utah, 1959), 6.

themes: 
Plants, Trees, Flora
Textiles, Clothing
See also: 
iczotilmatli.
iczoneneuhctli.