Tree 8 m tall, deciduous in the dry season. Forming a lignotuber.Bark rough and thinly persistent on the lower ca 0.5 m of trunk, flaky or ± tessellated and brownish grey, or smooth throughout, creamy white to pale grey.Branchlets sometimes have oil ducts visible in the pith; younger branchlets glabrous or sometimes scabrid to setose with bristle-glands. In this species the bristle-glands bear simple hairs (i.e. the bristle-glands appear branched).Juvenile growth (coppice or field seedlings to 50 cm): stems rounded in cross-section, setose with bristle-glands; juvenile leaves always petiolate, opposite, ovate-elliptic, 5–11 cm long, 4–6 cm wide, base usually rounded or sometimes very slightly lobed, apex broadly pointed, margin entire or distantly subcrenulate, green, dull, setose with bristle-glands. Crown of intermediate and adult leaves, opposite or alternate, always petiolate, petioles 0.4–1.2 cm long; blade lanceolate, (4.8)7.5–14 cm long, 1.4–5.5(7) cm wide, ± undulate, base tapering, less commonly lobed or rounded, margin entire, apex broadly pointed or almost rounded, concolorous, dull, green, glabrous or (on broader leaves) sparsely setose with bristle-glands, side-veins at greater than 45° to midrib, reticulation dense to very dense, intramarginal vein present, oil glands obscure. Inflorescence borne on leafless branchlets below new season’s leaf growth, axillary compound, the rhachis consisting of a basal internode ca 0.2–0.5 cm long, a second internode absent or to 0.3 cm long, sometimes a third and a fourth internode ca 0.2 cm long, and peduncles of variable length within a single inflorescence, 0.1–0.8 cm long, buds 3 and 7 per umbel, pedicels 0.5–1.5 cm. Mature buds pyriform, 0.5–0.7 cm long, 0.4–0.5 cm wide, smooth, scar present (outer operculum shed early), operculum shallowly rounded and sometime apiculate, stamens inflexed, all fertile, anthers oblong, dorsifixed, versatile, dehiscing by longitudinal slits, style long and straight, stigma tapered, locules 3, the ovules not arranged in distinct vertical rows on the placentae. Flowers creamy white.Fruit pedicellate (pedicels 0.6–1.5 cm long), cupular to barrel-shaped or cylindrical, rarely obconical, 0.7–1.1 cm long, 0.6–0.9 cm wide, thin-walled, disc descending vertically, valves 3, enclosed.Seeds brown, saucer-shaped, smooth, hilum ventral. Cultivated seedlings (measured at ca node 10): not grown
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