deciduous forests, thorny forests, cloud forests and pine-oak forests. In the wild, it is found as a getaway in heavily disturbed places at altitudes of 800–2300 m. As an introduced species (cultivated) it can be found in China, India, Zambia, Zimbabwe, South Africa and Australia. History The archaeological record of the use of Tagetes erecta among pre-Hispanic civilizations is not as abundant as in the case of other species of the same family. For example, it has been possible to establish the ceremonial use among the Mexica of T. lucida as an aromatic plant, which they called yauhtli, through the chemical analysis of the incense burners found in the remains of the Templo Mayor in Mexico City. The Nahuatl term cempoalxóchitl, was used to refer to several species of flowers, which includes T. erecta, T. lucida, T. patula, T. lunulata, T. tenuifolia, T. peduncularis and T. elongata. This complicates the differentiation of one species and another when such a term is used, however, it appears that T. erecta was primarily named by this term. The identification of T. erecta as some flowers represented in Aztec art, such as those seen in the Coyolxauhqui monolith, as part of the goddess's headdress, has been proposed as a symbol of her sovereignty or her death. They are part of the necklace that a plant deity wears in a vase found in the Templo Mayor, although it could also be T. patula. With the arrival of the Spaniards in Mexico, the documentary record of the ceremonial and medicinal use of T. erecta increased in which the flower is described by Bernardino de Sahagún as: These flowers are called Cempoalxóchitl; they are yellow and of good smell, and wide and beautiful, that they are born, and others that sow them in the orchards; They are in two ways, some they call females Cempoalxóchitl and they are big and beautiful, and others that are called Cempoalxóchitl males are not so beautiful or so big. Sahagún also describes, in the same work, that the plant had a role in the rituals of the religious festival Mexica of the month Teculhuitontli, where the goddess of salt Huixtocíhuatl, whose color was yellow, was celebrated and who offered herself as sacrifice a woman. In the work of the physician Francisco Hernández, it is described that the name cempoalxóchitl received at least seven types of flowers, noting that the term properly