Tree to 15 m tall. Forming a lignotuber.Bark rough, persistent on trunk and often also on the larger limbs, on older trunks thick, fissured to tessellated grey over reddish to orange, on branches grey to reddish flaky to scaly, ultimately smooth cream to pinkish or grey.Branchlets smooth (glabrous); elongated oil bodies occur in the pith.Juvenile growth (coppice or field seedlings to 50 cm): not seen.Adult leaves alternate, petioles 1.1–2.8 cm long; narrowly lanceolate to lanceolate, (7)9–17.5(24) cm long, 0.7–2.3(2.7) cm wide, base tapering to petiole, margin entire, apex pointed, concolorous, dull, green, smooth, side-veins at greater than 45° to midrib (penniveined), reticulation dense to very dense, intramarginal vein not visible (confluent with margin) or visible but very close to margin (variable between leaves on the same specimen), oil glands sparse and island or not visible.Inflorescence terminal compound, peduncles slender, rounded, (0.4)0.8–2.1 cm long, buds 7 per umbel, pedicels slender, (0.3)0.5–1.1 cm long. Mature buds obovoid or pyriform, 0.7–0.8 cm long, 0.4–0.5 cm wide, smooth and shiny, scar absent (both opercula shed together at flowering), operculum shallowly rounded or flattened, apiculate or not, stamens inflexed, all fertile, anthers oblong, dorsifixed, versatile, dehiscing by longitudinal slits, style as long as the floral cavity, straight, stigma blunt to mop-like, locules 4, the placentae each with ca 4 or 5 vertical ovule rows or the rows indistinct. Flowers creamy white.Fruit pedicellate (pedicels 0.3–1 cm long), ± barrel-shaped or tending to urn-shaped in outline, narrowed above to a distinct neck with the thin rim flared widely or rarely erect, 1.2–1.9 cm long, 0.9–1.4 cm wide, longer than wide, surface smooth, disc descending vertically or sometimes obliquely, valves usually 3, sometimes 4, enclosed.Seeds brown, 6–8 mm long, ellipsoidal with terminal wing, hilum ventral. Cultivated seedlings (measured at ca node 10): cotyledons large, reniform; stems rounded in cross-section, sparsely setose for basal lower 4 nodes then glabrous; leaves always shortly petiolate, opposite for at least 9 nodes, lower leaves elliptical then becoming oblong, 5–6.5 cm long, 0.5–1 cm wide, base ± tapering to petiole, apex pointed or rounded and apiculate, green, very sparsely setose but only to leaf-pair ca 3, glabrous thereafter.
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