The ocotl (translated as a pine tree) is described in Nahuatl and translated to Spanish and English in the DFC, but the image on f. 112r is of a different tree, the ayauhcuahuitl. Part of the description: "It is a provider of light, a means of seeing, a resinous torch." (SW)
Digital Florentine Codex/Códice Florentino Digital, edited by Kim N. Richter and Alicia Maria Houtrouw, "Book 11: Earthly Things", fol. 112r, Sahagún, Bernardino de. Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain. Transcribed and translated with notes by Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble. 2nd rev. ed. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research / University of Utah Press, 1950–82. Getty Research Institute, 2023. https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/en/book/11/folio/112r?spTexts=&nhTexts= Accessed 11 November 2025.
See an image that represents ocotl in the Visual Lexicon of Aztec Hieroglyphs, ed. Stephanie Wood (Eugene, Ore.: Wired Humanities, 2020-present).
ocotlapaqui in itequiuh naui tomi = The pine-torch splitters' tax is 4 tomines (Coyoacan, mid-sixteenth cent.)
Beyond the Codices, eds. Arthur J.O. Anderson, Frances Berdan, and James Lockhart (Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center, 1976), Doc. 25, 142–143.
in tomavac ocutl in apocio in cemanaoac tlavia, tlanextia = the thick torch, the clear one which lighteth, illumineth the world (central Mexico, sixteenth century)
Fr. Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain; Book 6 -- Rhetoric and Moral Philosophy, No. 14, Part 7, 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), 44.
tlatlatiuh in ocutl = The pine torch went on burning (central Mexico, sixteenth century)
Fr. Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain; Book 6 -- Rhetoric and Moral Philosophy, No. 14, Part 7, 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), 204.
in nanti, in tati, in jxeque, in nacaceque, in iolloque, in tlaviltin, in ocome, in tezcame = the mothers, the fathers, the discreet, the able, [who are] the candles, the torches, the mirrors (central Mexico, sixteenth century)
Fr. Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain; Book 6 -- Rhetoric and Moral Philosophy, No. 14, Part 7, 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), 216.