Tree to 15 m tall. Forming a lignotuber.Bark smooth throughout, powdery, shedding in thin greyish yellow scales to reveal vivid white.Branchlets lack oil glands in the pith; non-glaucous, smooth, yellowish.Juvenile growth (coppice or field seedlings to 50 cm): stems rounded in cross-section, scabrid with the remains of bristle-glands or smooth; juvenile leaves shortly petiolate, opposite, oblong to cordate to ovate or becoming elliptical, 7–15.5 cm long, 4.5–11 cm wide, base lobed or truncate to rounded, yellowish green, slightly scabrid or smooth.Crown predominantly of adult leaves, however, opposite to sub-opposite, undulate, broader intermediate-type leaves are sometimes also present and may subtend inflorescences. New growth often silvery (but not waxy).Crown leaves mostly alternate, petioles (0.4)0.8–2 cm long; blade ovate to lanceolate, (6)7–23.5 cm long, 1.3–6(7) cm wide, base tapering to petiole or rarely rounded, margin entire, apex pointed, concolorous or slightly discolorous, stiff, undulate, glossy or only slightly so, yellow-green, side-veins at greater than 45° to midrib, reticulation very dense, intramarginal vein present, oil glands apparently absent.Inflorescence axillary compound, with rhachis internodes very shortened (condensed) often with only the basal internode obvious and usually Mature buds obovoid to pyriform, 0.6–0.9 cm long, 0.5–0.8 cm wide, smooth or rarely slightly scurfy, scar present (outer operculum shed early, whole or in scaly fragments), operculum shallowly rounded, stamens inflexed, all fertile, anthers oblong, dorsifixed, versatile, dehiscing by longitudinal slits, style long and straight, stigma blunt, locules 3, the placentae each with ca 5 or 7 vertical ovule rows, but the rows ± indistinct. Flowers white, perfumed.Fruit pedicellate (pedicels 0.2–0.7 cm long), cupular to cylindrical to barrel-shaped or almost obconical, 0.8–1.2 cm long, 0.8–1.1 cm wide, thin-walled, disc descending vertically, valves 3, enclosed.Seeds not seen (other ghost gum species have brown, saucer-shaped seed, smooth on both sides with hilum ventral). Cultivated seedlings (measured at ca node 10): not grown.
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