August 1831, The Gentleman's magazine, Volume 101, page 100, in an article titled Mexican Antiquities:
Over the heads of these deities, tablets of hieroglyphics, expressive of their titles and qualities, are similarly arranged ; and devotees are offering to them in the same posture, and with the same gesture as exhibited on Egyptian paintings, pots, and baskets of flowers (whence came the legend of the gardens of Adonis), among which flowers the manitas or handplant of Guatemala appears to have been a favourite.
1850, M. A. Burnett, Plantae utiliores: or illustrations of useful plants, employed in the arts and medicine, part 8:
There existed only one specimen of this sacred tree in all Mexico, at least to the knowledge of the Mexicans; […] In spite, however, of the firmest convictions of the indivisibility of this tree — the Manitas, as it is commonly called — it has been propagated by cuttings, some of which are at this moment thriving in some of the larger stoves of our modern collectors.
1972, Pedro Alonso O'Crouley, Seán Galvin, A description of the Kingdom of New Spain, page 24:
There is a most singular tree called the manitas (little hands) because each leaf is a flower that is almost the exact shape of a man's hand. There is another tree, called the xochinacaztli, which produces the flor de la oreja [ear flower, so called because it is very like a human ear.
