Tree or sometimes a mallee to 8 m tall. Forming a lignotuber.Bark rough, light grey-brown to reddish brown, thin, flaky to tessellated over part or all of the trunk, branches usually smooth, cream to pale orange or pale brown, rarely rough.Branchlets lack oil glands in the pith.Juvenile growth (coppice or field seedlings to 50 cm): stems rounded in cross-section; juvenile leaves stiff, thickish, shortly petiolate, opposite, elliptical to ovate or lanceolate, 4.5–10.5 cm long, 1.2–3 cm wide, pale green to yellowish green. Adult leaves alternate, petioles 1–2.5 cm long; blade lanceolate, 8–16.5 cm long, 1–2(3) cm wide, base tapering to petiole, margin entire, apex pointed, concolorous, dull or glossy, light green to mid-green, penniveined, reticulation very dense, intramarginal vein apparently absent, oil glands apparently absent.Inflorescence terminal compound, peduncles rounded to angular, (0.3)0.6–1.3 cm long, buds 7 or 9 per umbel, pedicels 0.2–0.8 cm long. Mature buds obovoid to pyriform, 0.6–0.8 cm long, 0.5–0.8 cm wide, scurfy to scarcely scurfy or not scurfy, scar absent (both opercula shed together at flowering), operculum rounded and often apiculate, stamens inflexed, all fertile, anthers versatile, dorsifixed, oblong, dehiscing by longitudinal slits, style long and straight, stigma blunt with a short fringe of papillae, locules 4 or 5, the placentae each with 5 vertical ovule rows or the rows irregular. Flowers creamy white.Fruit pedicellate (pedicels 0.1–0.6 cm long), urceolate, 1.1–1.7(2) cm long, 0.9–1.6 cm wide, smooth, disc descending vertically, valves 4 or 5, enclosed.Seeds brown, 7–10 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 only on lowest part; leaves shortly petiolate, opposite for at least 12 nodes, sometimes becoming sub-opposite then reverting to opposite, lanceolate to elliptic, 5.5–10 cm long, 0.8–2.5 cm wide, base tapering, dull, mid-green, sparsely setose with bristle-glands on lower leaves only, upper leaves smooth.
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