Pseudowintera colorata (Raoul) Dandy

As its epithet suggests, what sets this plant apart is the unusual colouring of its aromatic foliage: pale yellow-green above, often with a pink flush, bordered in bordeaux red, sometimes blotched that colour when growing in exposed conditions, and glaucous below. It can easily be mistaken for a cultivar selected for its showiness, but this is its natural appearance. Particularly striking colour selections are available in the horticultural trade (see below). The leaves are strongly peppery, best tasted as a small sample; the same applies to the berries (Grant 2025). According to the Hillier Manual, however, fruits are ‘rarely produced in the British Isles’ (Edwards & Marshall 2019), but this may be because usually only male or female plants are grown.

It is usually a rounded shrub to 1.5–1.8 m, but occasionally achieves a greater, tree-like stature, though only two records of it at tree height exist in The Tree Register of Britain and Ireland (2025), both in Ireland, and so at the milder limits of our area. There it seems to grow taller than in the wild, reaching 7 m at Ilnacullin on Garinish Island in County Cork. In Australia it is difficult to grow due to its moisture requirements. It seems to do well, however, in gardens in its native New Zealand (Grant 2025), where it is also used in street plantings as edging or in low hedges (Blue Mountain Nurseries 2025). It is slow-growing in cultivation but very hardy, thriving in good soil enriched with humus and succeeding reasonably well in a variety of soils. It can grow in either sun or shade, but produces its best colour in full sun (Metcalf 2000). Like the other species in the genus, it has several medicinal properties (see genus article), and it has been planted as a commercial crop in New Zealand for that purpose (Forest Herbs Research 2025).

In the wild, it is often one of the principal constituents of second-growth scrub following forest clearance, and it is one of the few plants that deer and other browsers leave untouched. Some wild bushes have leaves that are golden without the reddish colouring, but plants propagated from such forms and grown alongside the typically coloured forms soon developed the burgundy markings (Metcalf 2000). Cooney et al. (2012) showed that the red leaf margins of this species indicate increased content of polygodial, the chemical that provides medicinal benefits and serves as an effective antifeedant, deterring insects that feed on the leaves. It is likely that the wine-coloured markings, so ornamental for gardeners, function as visual signals to reduce herbivory. Māori women, when weaning a child, rubbed crushed leaves of this species on their breasts to give them a bitter taste, and the sap was used to treat skin ailments (Metcalf 2000).

First described by Raoul in 1844 (as Drimys colorata), for several authors, including the Winteraceae guru A.C. Smth, it is not sufficiently different, especially in terms of floral characteristics, from Pseudowintera axillaris, and is better placed as a variety of it (Smith 1943). Prevailing wisdom considers that leaf characters and differences in distribution are sufficient reasons to maintain its species status, a view shared by Dandy when he renamed the genus in 1933 and by Vink (1970).