Flowers are say 15mm across, solitary or in pairs on a red or green stem say 120 tall. It has a single long narrow leaf and prefers poor, damp, mossy clay in full to dappled sun. Often found on road batters or on track-sides from the far north in October to Fiordland in December. Crowded red glands on the dorsal sepal identified from C. chlorostyla.

Sir J.D. Hooker included some eight taxa in his description of C. minor but Dr Mark Clements designated this one as C. minor from the type sheet in London in 1989 because it looked most like the drawing with Hooker’s 1853 description.