Coprosma quadrifida

Coprosma quadrifida, the prickly currant-bush, is a slender, much-branched evergreen shrub in the family Rubiaceae, native to southeastern Australia from southern Queensland through New South Wales and Victoria to Tasmania and South Australia, where it grows in moist eucalypt forest, riparian thickets, gullies and the margins of cool temperate rainforest. It typically reaches 1 to 4 metres in height, with stiff, divaricate, interlacing branches whose ultimate twigs are often shortened and sharply spinescent, giving the shrub its prickly habit. The small, opposite, ovate to narrowly elliptic leaves are 5 to 15 millimetres long, mid-green and glabrous, borne in clusters on short side shoots and with interpetiolar stipules typical of the family. Inconspicuous greenish-white, four-lobed, funnel-shaped flowers appear in spring, the sexes usually on separate plants, the females followed in summer and autumn by translucent, bright red, ovoid drupes about 5 to 6 millimetres long containing two small stones. The fruits are eagerly taken by native birds.