Tree to 15 m tall. Forming a lignotuber.Bark rough over trunk and branches to ca 3 cm diameter, chunky, deeply tessellated, often friable, brown to grey-brown to yellow-brown over light pinkish brown.Branchlets smooth (glabrous); elongated oil bodies sometimes visible in the pith.Juvenile growth (coppice or field seedlings to 50 cm): stems rounded in cross-section, setose for ca 25 nodes; juvenile leaves always shortly petiolate, opposite or becoming alternate after ca 30 cm tall, lanceolate, 6.5–13.5 cm long, (0.5)1–2 cm wide, base tapering to petiole, apex pointed, glossy, green, discolorous, sparsely setose on underside or almost glabrous with setae on petiole only.Adult leaves alternate, petioles 1–3 cm long; blade lanceolate, 7–18 cm long, 1–3 cm wide, base tapering to petiole, margin entire, apex finely pointed, discolorous, very glossy, smooth, side-veins greater than 45° to midrib, reticulation dense to very dense, intramarginal vein present, oil glands island, one per areole, or obscure.Inflorescence terminal compound, peduncles 0.8–1.7 cm long, buds 7 per umbel, usually pedicellate (pedicels 0–0.3 cm long). Mature buds pyriform to obovoid to ovoid, 0.6–0.9 cm long, 0.4–0.6 cm wide, smooth, scar absent (both opercula shed together at flowering), operculum shallowly rounded sometimes umbonate, 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, or arranged in 5 rows. Flowers creamy white.Fruit pedicellate or sometimes sessile (pedicels 0–1.1 cm long), urn-shaped and usually lacking a pronounced neck, simply tapering to the orifice which may be small, 1.1–1.8(2.1) cm long, 1–1.4(1.7) cm wide, usually longer than wide, rim thick and fruit generally thick-walled, surface smooth and sometimes speckled, disc descending vertically, valves 4, enclosed.Seeds brown, 5–8 mm long, ellipsoidal with terminal wing, hilum ventral.Cultivated seedlings (measured at ca node 10): cotyledons reniform; stems rounded in cross-section, setose with long and short bristle-glands for at least 13 internodes; leaves shortly petiolate (to 1 cm), opposite, linear-oblong to narrowly lanceolate or narrowly falcate, 9–19.5 cm long, 0.8–2.5 cm wide, base lobed, rounded or tapering to petiole, never peltate, lower leaves dull, setose on both surfaces until ca node 8–9 then very glossy, green, and glabrous above, paler and setose on underside and margin until at least node 13.
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