The copalcuahuitl is described in the Florentine Codex, Book 11. The emphasis is on the liquid it exudes (a resin that becomes incense). (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. 115v. Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2023. https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/en/book/11/folio/115v . Accessed 12 November 2025.
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.