Tree 10 m tall. Forming a lignotuber.Bark partly rough on oldest plants or wholly smooth on smaller plants; rough bark forming a stocking on lower trunk often very short, rarely for up to 1.5 m of trunk, tessellated and dark grey; smooth bark white to pale cream-grey or pink-grey, powdery. Branchlets usually have oil ducts in the pith; branchlets not setose or scabrid. Juvenile growth (coppice or field seedlings to 50 cm): stems rounded in cross-section, setose with bristle-glands bearing simple hairs on lower stem but becoming sparse by 20 cm tall; leaves opposite to sub-opposite becoming alternate on upper stem, shortly petiolate (petioles 0.1–0.2 cm), cordate or ovate to elliptical, 2–6 cm, long, 1–3 cm wide, base lobed to rounded then becoming tapered, margin entire, apex rounded or pointed, green to grey-green, sparsely setose becoming glabrous.Crown consists of adult leaves.Adult leaves sub-opposite to alternate, petioles 0.3–1.7 cm long; blade linear to narrowly lanceolate or narrowly falcate, sometimes narrowly elliptical, 4–13 cm long, 0.3–1.8 cm wide, flat, base tapering, margin entire, apex pointed, concolorous, side-veins at greater than 45° to midrib, reticulation dense to very dense, intramarginal vein present, oil glands ?obscure or minute, island.Inflorescence axillary compound and condensed, the rhachis consisting of a basal internode ca 0.1–0.4 cm long, sometimes a second internode to 0.3 cm long but often absent, bearing peduncles 0–0.2 cm long but of of variable length within a single inflorescence; buds in umbels of (?3)7, pedicels 0.1–0.4 cm long. Mature buds pyriform (0.4–0.5 cm long, 0.3–0.4 cm wide), smooth, scar present (outer operculum shed early), operculum shallowly rounded, stamens inflexed, all fertile, anthers oblong, dorsifixed, versatile, dehiscing by longitudinal slits, style long and straight, stigma blunt, locules 3, the ovules arranged in 3 ± regular vertical rows on the placentae or the rows obscure. Flowers creamy white.Fruit pedicellate (pedicels 0.1–0.4 cm long), barrel-shaped to ± cylindrical or cupular, 0.6–1 cm long, 0.5–0.9 cm wide, thin-walled, disc descending vertically, valves 3, enclosed.Seeds not seen. Cultivated seedlings (measured at ca node 10): not grown yet.
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