Mingimingi

Coprosma propinqua, known by its Maori name mingimingi (or mikimiki in the Kai Tahu dialect), is a New Zealand endemic shrub or small tree of the Rubiaceae family, typically reaching 3 to 6 metres but occasionally up to 7 metres in height. It has a strongly divaricating growth habit, with stiff, interlacing branches arising at wide angles and grey, almost black-looking bark when viewed from a distance. The leaves are dark green, thick and somewhat leathery, narrowly linear-oblong to linear-ovate, with small pits called domatia on their paler undersides; juvenile foliage is more variable and thinner than the mature form. Tiny, inconspicuous unisexual flowers are borne separately on male and female plants in August and September, the males in small axillary clusters and the females terminal on the branchlets. The fruit, ripening in March and April, is a translucent dark blue to indigo drupe up to 8 mm long, occasionally white or yellow. Mingimingi grows in lowland to montane forest, scrub, swamp margins, stream banks and rocky places throughout both main islands of New Zealand and on Stewart and the Chatham Islands.