Colenso's mingimingi

The species is a low-growing or prostrate shrub that is sprawling and branched, usually 40 cm tall by 60 cm across but sometimes forming patches 2 m across. The leaves are sessile or subsessile and are pinkish green to red-brown. The branches are ascending to erect, weakly ribbed and a grey-brown colour. Its berries are 4–5 mm in diameter, globose, fleshy, and glossy; colours range between white, pink, red, and crimson to almost black. Their thin flesh conceals 5 hard seeds. Its leaves are 5–10 by 1–4 mm, alternate and spreading with greenish veins and white interveinal grooves; they have 3–5 prominent parallel veins and can have a white stripe on the underside. Leaf margins are distinctively finely hairy when young, but mostly glabrous, and rolled downwards and inwards. The leaves are distinctively lozenge shaped: oblong, then narrowing to a fine point. Its honey-scented flowers are white to yellowish, and produced in clusters of 2–5 at the tips of the branches. They are subtended by two keeled bracteoles and a bract which is up to 2.5 mm long and pinkish green to red in colour. This is glaucescent, broadly ovulate, obtuse and ciliolate. The bracteoles are very similar but smaller and distinctly keeled. The sepals are up to 4 mm long and imbricate with stomata only on the adaxial surface. …

A. colensoi is endemic to New Zealand. It is found in both main islands, from the central North Island to Otago. In the South Island it can be found in drier eastern mountains of Marlborough and Canterbury, locally in Otago and rarely in northern Southland. Its habitat is generally montane to low-alpine (600–1600 m), extending to lower altitudes in the southern part of its range. It prefers well-drained sites in shrubland, tussock grassland, and rocky outcrops.

This species flowers from September to February and begins fruiting in November, ending in June. The berries are fleshy and eaten by birds, reptiles and invertebrates (although hardly palatable to humans); the leaves and flowers are very rarely eaten.