Tree to 10 m tall. Forming a lignotuber.Bark rough, loose, tessellated, thin, grey-brown to reddish brown flakes, variably persistent on the trunk, often over the whole trunk and sometimes the larger limbs, rarely mainly gum-barked with imperfectly shed rough rusty flaky bark only at the base; smooth bark creamy white and pale grey. Branchlets lack oil glands in the pith; smooth (glabrous).Juvenile growth (coppice or field seedlings to 50 cm): stems rounded in cross-section, smooth (not scabrid or setose); juvenile leaves always petiolate, mostly alternate, large, orbicular to elliptical becoming broadly ovate or lanceolate, 10–26 cm long, 3.5–18 cm wide, base tapering or rounded or truncate, apex rounded and apiculate or pointed, dull, green, smooth (not scabrid or setose).Adult leaves predominantly alternate, sometimes a few sub-opposite to opposite pairs present, petioles 1.1–5.6 cm long; blade broadly lanceolate to ovate, 8–23(27) cm long, (1.2)2–7.6 cm wide, often undulate, base usually tapering to petiole, margin entire, apex pointed, concolorous or very slightly discolorous, dull to moderately glossy, green, smooth, side-veins at greater than 45° to midrib (penniveined), reticulation very dense, intramarginal vein apparently absent (confluent with margin), oil glands apparently absent.Inflorescence terminal compound, peduncles stout or relatively slender (very variable), rounded to angular, 0.4–2.8 cm long, buds 7(9) per umbel, pedicels 0.2–1.8 cm long. Mature buds obovoid to pyriform (0.8-1 cm long, 0.6-0.8 cm wide), smooth, scar absent (both opercula shed together at flowering), operculum shallowly rounded and apiculate, stamens inflexed, all fertile, anthers oblong, dorsifixed, versatile, dehiscing by longitudinal slits, style as long as or almost as long as floral cavity, straight, stigma blunt or papillose (mop like), locules 4, the vertical ovule rows indistinct on the placentae or ca 5 or 7. Flowers creamy white.Fruit pedicellate (pedicels 0.2–1.4 cm long), urceolate with a short vertical neck that is flared or not flared at the rim, 1.3–2.8 cm long, 1.1–2.2 cm wide, smooth, disc descending vertically or sometimes obliquely when the rim is flared, valves 4, enclosed.Seeds brown, 8–15 mm long, ellipsoidal with terminal wing, hilum ventral. Cultivated seedlings (measured at ca node 10): cotyledons large, reniform; stems rounded in cross-section, setose with bristle-glands, may be sparsely so; leaves always petiolate, opposite for at least 12 nodes, elliptical to ovate-lanceolate, 3–12.7 cm long, 1.3–4 cm wide, base rounded to tapering, rarely oblique or truncate, margin entire or distantly subcrenulate, apex acute to broadly so or rounded, green, slightly discolorous, setose with bristle-glands sparsely distributed on petiole, margin and main veins on lower leaves but ± glabrous by node 11 or earlier.
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