pyracanthan.

Etymology: < classical Latin pyracantha name of an unidentified shrub or plant, perhaps the firethorn (Pliny), in post-classical Latin applied by 16th-cent. botanists to Pyracantha coccinea, and adopted into scientific Latin as the specific epithet in its former name Mespilus pyracantha ( Linnaeus Species Plantarum (1753) I. 478) < Hellenistic Greek πυράκανθα , name of an unidentified shrub or plant, mentioned (but not described) by Dioscorides (1. 19), apparently < πῦρ fire (see pyro- comb. form) + ἄκανθα thorn (see acanthus n.); the name was considered to be appropriate to Pyracantha coccinea on account of its profusion of scarlet or flame-coloured berries.The numerous Latin versions of Dioscorides left πυράκανθα unidentified, and merely Latinized as pyracantha . According to Lobel Adversaria (1576) 438, the first element is post-classical Latin pyrus pear tree (see pyrus n.), from the resemblance of the leaves to those of the wild pear (‘arbusta cui facies et folium Pyrastri..propter foliorum similitudinem nonnulli Pyracantham vocant’ ‘a shrub with the appearance and foliage of the wild pear, which some call Pyracantha on account of the similarity of its leaves’), but this is unlikely, as it does not account for the presence of the compound in Greek.