Coprosma quadrifida – Native Currant, Prickly Currant seed x25

Native to New South Wales (North, Central and South Coast and Tablelands), Victoria and Tasmania (mountain gullies, slopes in shaded areas), it was eaten raw by the Aboriginals and made into puddings by the first settlers.

A slender shrub growing 2-4 metres (6-12ft) high with divaricate (spreading at a wide angle) branches and are often spinescent (end in a spine); the branchlets are pubescent (hairy). The leaves are crowded, variable, narrow-ovate to obovate (broader at the tip than the base) or elliptic to lanceolate, 0.5 to 1.5 cm long 2-5mm wide. The flowers are solitary, terminal or axillary (at the leaf stems), male and female. Fruit is an oblong drupe, 7mm long, red, crowned by persistent calyx lobes. The fruit is abundant late summer to autumn and is reported as sweet and juicy with two seeds large enough to be spat out.

This plant’s preference is for damp sites in woodland, sclerophyll forest and cool-temperate rainforest usually along creeks.