mizquitl.

The Florentine Codex explains in Nahuatl that the mizquitl tree can be bent to form a circle, the leaves produce a medicine for the eyes in the form of drops, and the fruit grows in clusters like locks of hair and it is sweet and edible. (summary by SW)
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. 124r. Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2023. https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/en/book/11/folio/124r?spTexts=&nhTexts= . Accessed 13 November 2025. See also f. 124v for an image and a description of the quetzalmizquitl tree, which shows only green seed pods, and yet the text says it is the same as the mizquitl.

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

ytoca mizquitl = named Mizquitl (male) (Cuernavaca region, ca. 1540s)
The Book of Tributes: Early Sixteenth-Century Nahuatl Censuses from Morelos, ed. and transl. S. L. Cline, (Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center Publications, 1993), 132–133.

mizquitl = mesquites; may also refer to the warrior king specifically (late sixteenth century, Tetzcoco?)
Ballads of the Lords of New Spain: The Codex Romances de los Señores de la Nueva España, transcribed and translated by John Bierhorst (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2009), 32.

ynjn coatlapechtli, quaujtl in tlaxixintli, iuhqujn cocoa, naujntin in motzinnamjctoque: nauhcampa caca yn jntzontecon: … mjchioauhtzoalli, ynjc qujpepechoaia, yn jmizqujo, ca mizqujquaujtl, in tlaxintli, yn ixiptla muchipa catca, yn oqujpepechoque = This serpent bench was hewn of wood, to represent serpents; four sides carried the tails; four sides carried their heads… They covered [Uitzilopochtli’s] mesquite wood framework with fish amaranth dough; for his figure was always hewn of mesquite wood, which they covered. (sixteenth century, Mexico City)
Fr. Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain; Book 2—The Ceremonies, No. 14, Part III, 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, 1951), 69.

Mizquitl wood is used for making a robust and aromatic charcoal in the U.S. today. But "mesquite" charcoal has also been identified in archaeological sites in Mexico, and it has been described as the major use for mizquitl despite its use as a hardwood and for medicinal purposes. [See: Rodney W. Bovey, Mesquite: History, Growth, Biology, Uses, and Management, 2016, 13.] (SW)