Tree to 18 m tall. Forming a lignotuber.Bark rough throughout except for the smallest branches, thick, tessellated and finely flaky, yellow-brown with a hint of orange.Branchlets scabrid with setae or their weathered remains; elongated oil bodies often present in the pith.Juvenile growth (coppice or field seedlings to 50 cm): stem ± rounded in cross-section, setose becoming scabrid; juvenile leaves predominantly alternate, always petiolate, ovate-elliptic at first becoming ovate-lanceolate, 5–18.5 cm long, 4–5.5 cm wide, base peltate except at lowest nodes where rounded to truncate, green to grey-green, densely setose with bristle-glands, becoming scabrid as these weather.Crown entirely of scabrid juvenile and intermediate leaves, predominantly alternately arranged, rarely a few pairs sub-opposite, petiole 0.8–1.7 cm long; blade usually lanceolate, sometimes ovate-elliptic to ovate, (5)6.5–12.5 cm long, (1.3)2–3.5(4.8) cm wide, flat or undulate, base of most leaves peltate, rarely rounded to tapering to petiole, apex rounded or pointed, margin entire, concolorous, dull, grey-green, penniveined, densely to very densely reticulate, intramarginal vein parallel to and just within margin, oil glands island or obscure.Inflorescence terminal compound, peduncles 0.9–2.6 cm long, buds 7 per umbel, sessile or pedicellate (pedicels 0–0.3 cm long). Mature buds obovoid, ca 0.7 cm long, 0.6 cm wide, shiny green or sometimes white on surface due to rubbery cuticle (not wax), scar present (outer operculum shed early), operculum rounded to flattened and umbonate to apiculate, or conical, stamens inflexed, anthers ± oblong, versatile, dorsifixed, dehiscing by longitudinal slits (non-confluent), style long, stigma blunt and shortly papillose, locules 3, the ovules arranged in 5 ± clear vertical rows on the placentae. Flowers white.Fruit sessile or very shortly pedicellate (pedicels 0–0.3 cm long), barrel-shaped to urceolate or truncate-globose, 0.8–1.3 cm long, 0.8–1.1 cm wide, disc descending, valves 3, enclosed.Seeds brown to reddish brown and shiny, 2.5–6 mm long, boat-shaped with a keel on the smooth and usually cracked dorsal surface, not winged but some seed have a short flange at one end, hilum ventral. Cultivated seedlings (measured at ca node 10): cotyledons large reniform to orbicular; stems rounded in cross-section, setose throughout; leaves always petiolate (to 1.6 cm), opposite for lower 5 to 10 nodes then becoming alternate, ovate-lanceolate, 7.5–11.5 cm long, 3–5 cm wide, base rounded until node 3–6 then peltate and persisting so, margin entire or irregular, apex rounded to pointed, more or less concolorous, dull, green, setose throughout.
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