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xochicuahuitl.

Headword: 
xochicuahuitl.
Principal English Translation: 

literally, a tree with blossoms, perhaps indicating Tamoanchan, perhaps a liquidambar tree (see attestations); or, possibly black sage (see the Florentine Codex)

Attestations from sources in English: 

xochicuahuitl = flower trees
John Bierhorst, Ballads of the Lords of New Spain, 2009, 106–107.

The Florentine Codex, Book 11, folio 187v, has an image of the xochicuahuitl and a description. The description is of a large, flowering, branching, fragrant tree, where the trunks are like stone columns. The keywording team of the Digital Florentine Codex give "black sage" as the translation. Black sage is a shrub that can grow up to six feet tall and ten feet wide.
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. 187v. Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2023. https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/en/book/11/folio/187v/images/3d8eab38-... . Accessed 26 November 2025.

"Ma xihualhuian Macuiltonaleque, xiconehcocan in xochicuahuitl. = Come here, Macuiltonaleque, go and arrive at the flower tree (Tamoanchan)." (Ceremonial language, quoting a ticitl named Magdalena Papalo y Coaxochi.) (southwestern Puebla, twenty-first century)
Edward Anthony Polanco, Healing Like Our Ancestors, 2024.

The Visual Lexicon of Aztec Hieroglyphs (Stephanie Wood, ed., Eugene, Ore.: Wired Humanities Projects, 2020-present) has some related hieroglyphic elements:
https://aztecglyphs.wired-humanities.org/content/xochicuahuitl-mdz50r
https://aztecglyphs.wired-humanities.org/content/xochicuauh-verg10r

Attestations from sources in Spanish: 

"Xochicuahuitl, síncopa de Xochi - ocotzo - cuahuitl, árbol del liquidambar...."
Antonio Peñafiel, Nomenclatura geográfica de México, 1897, 317.

xochicuahuitl = árbol florido
Georges Baudot, Pervivencia del mundo azteca en el México virreinal, 2004, 154.

themes: 
Flowers
Plants, Trees, Flora
See also: 
xochitl.
cuahuitl.