Tree to 15 m tall. Forming a lignotuber.Bark smooth throughout, white to cream and pinkish grey, shedding in thin brown-grey patches, rarely with a very short stocking of rough ± tessellated grey bark at the base of the trunk.Branchlets non-glaucous, smooth; ± elongated oil glands or ducts present in the pith.Juvenile growth (coppice or field seedlings to 50 cm): stems rounded in cross-section, smooth; juvenile leaves always petiolate (petioles 1–2 cm), opposite for very few nodes then alternate, or alternate throughout, lower leaves elliptical then ovate to lanceolate, 10–26 cm long, 3.5–15 cm wide, base rounded to tapering or occasionally oblique for some leaves, apex rounded or pointed, leathery, often glossy, yellow-green to green, glabrous.Crown of adult leaves alternate, petioles (0.9)1.2–3.8 cm long; blade lanceolate or falcate, 9.3–27 cm long, 0.9–3.4 cm wide, flat or slightly undulate, base tapering to petiole, margin entire or sometimes distantly scalloped, apex pointed, concolorous, glossy, slightly glossy or dull, green to yellow-green, side-veins at greater than 45° to midrib, reticulation dense to very dense, intramarginal vein present, oil glands not visible.Inflorescence axillary compound, with rhachis internodes very shortened (condensed), usually with only a basal internode (0.2–0.5 cm long) and either no further internodes or a second internode to 0.2 cm long, rarely the earliest-formed of a new season's set of inflorescences may have 3 or 4 internodes, but subsequent inflorescences going up the branchlet conform to the usual condensed pattern, peduncles ± rounded, 0–0.3 cm long, buds usually in 3s on side-branches of inflorescence and in 7s terminally, pedicels 0.1–0.6 cm long. Mature buds pyriform, 0.5–0.7 cm long, 0.4–0.6 cm wide, smooth, often whitish but not waxy nor scurfy, scar present (outer operculum shed early), operculum rounded, stamens inflexed, all fertile, anthers oblong, dorsifixed, versatile, dehiscing by longitudinal slits, style long and straight, stigma ± blunt, locules 3, the placentae with ovule rows indistinct. Flowers white.Fruit pedicellate (pedicels 0.1–0.6 cm long), cupular to ± cylindrical or barrel-shaped, 0.9–1.3 cm long, (0.6)0.7–1 cm wide, disc descending vertically or obliquely, valves 3, enclosed or at rim level.Seeds brown, saucer-shaped, smooth, hilum ventral. Cultivated seedlings (measured at ca node 10): not grown yet.
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