Small tree commonly to 5 m tall, sometimes to 15 m tall. Forming a lignotuber and also rhizomes.Bark rough over trunk and branches to ca 2 cm diameter, thick often corky and flaky, deeply tessellated, grey-brown over light brown.Branchlets smooth (glabrous); elongated oil bodies sometimes present in the pith.Juvenile growth (coppice or field seedlings to 50 cm): stems rounded in cross-section, setose or smooth (glabrous); juvenile leaves always shortly petiolate, opposite, linear-elliptic to linear-oblong, 3.5–8 cm long, 0.4–1.5(2) cm wide, base tapering to petiole or rounded, apex pointed, glossy, green, discolorous, glabrous.Adult leaves alternate, petioles 0.7–2.5 cm long; blade lanceolate, (7.5)8.4–19.5 cm long, 0.9–2.5 cm wide, base tapering to petiole, margin entire, apex finely pointed, discolorous, dull to slightly glossy, green, smooth, side-veins greater than 45° to midrib, reticulation dense to very dense, intramarginal vein present but close to margin and more easily seen from underside, oil glands island, one per areole or sometimes absent.Inflorescence terminal compound, peduncles slender 0.4–1.2 cm long, buds 7 per umbel, pedicels 0.3–0.8 cm long. Mature buds pyriform to obovoid or ovoid, 0.5–0.7 cm long, 0.3–0.5 cm wide, smooth not scurfy, scar absent (both opercula shed together at flowering), operculum shallowly rounded, stamens inflexed, all fertile, anthers oblong, dorsifixed, versatile, dehiscing by longitudinal slits, style long and straight, stigma blunt but with a fringe of papillae visible, locules 4, the ovules not arranged in clear rows on the placentae. Flowers creamy white.Fruit pedicellate (pedicels (0.1)0.3–0.8 cm long), urceolate with a short erect neck with rim scarcely flared, 1–1.8 cm long, 0.8–1.2 cm wide, surface smooth and sometimes speckled, disc descending vertically, valves 4, enclosed.Seeds brown, 7–11 mm long, ellipsoidal with terminal wing, hilum ventral.Cultivated seedlings (measured at ca node 10): cotyledons reniform; stems rounded in cross-section, setose with bristle-glands for 6 to 11 internodes then glabrous; leaves shortly petiolate (to 1.2 cm), opposite, linear-oblong to narrowly lanceolate, 5–15(17) cm long, 0.6–2.5 cm wide, base tapering to petiole, lower leaves dull and sparsely setose on both sides, but at ca node 5–8 becoming slightly to very glossy green on upper side, paler on under side, and glabrous. Simple white hairs absent.
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