We describe the capabilities and performance of a terrestrial laser scanning instrument built for the purpose of recording and retrieving the three-dimensional structure of forest vegetation. The dual-wavelength Echidna® lidar characterizes the forest structure at an angular resolution as fine as 1 mrad while distinguishing between leaves and trunks by exploiting their differential reflectances at two wavelengths: 1 and 1.5 μm. The instrument records the full waveforms of return signals from 5 ns laser pulses at half-nanosecond time resolution; obtains ±117 deg zenith and 360 deg azimuth coverage out to a radius of more than 70 m; provides single-target range resolution of 4.8 and 2.3 cm for the 1 and 1.5 μm channels, respectively (1σ); and separates adjacent pulse returns in the same waveform at a distance of 52.0 and 63.8 cm apart for the 1 and 1.5 μm channels, respectively. The angular resolution is in part controlled by user-selectable divergence optics and is shown to be textless2 mrad for the instrument’s standard resolution mode, while the signal-to-noise ratio is 10 at 70 m range for targets with leaf-like reflectance for both channels. The portability and target differentiation make the instrument an ideal ground-based lidar suited for vegetation sensing.