plant

Nopal

Nature

The named Opuntia prickly-pear cactus of Mexican food and national plant speech. Not agave as maguey, and not pitaya as dragonfruit vine.

Also known as Prickly pear · Opuntia · Tuna cactus

Nahua tradition

  • Nopal appears in Nahua tradition.

    Sahagún’s Florentine Codex Book 11 records nopal/opuntia among food and cochineal-host plants — named prickly-pear cactus in earthly chapters. A colonial-era Nahua ethnographic attestation, not a pan-Mesoamerican essence and not an unfiltered pre-invasion voice.

    from Bernardino de Sahagún and Nahua collaborators · Florentine Codex, c. 1577

    appears in · sourced · culturally specific

sources

  • Florentine Codex · Bernardino de Sahagún and Nahua collaborators

    Bernardino de Sahagún, General History of the Things of New Spain (Florentine Codex).