Tree to 20 m tall. Forming a lignotuber. Bark rough throughout, grey or grey-brown, fibrous, sometimes prickly to touch, held on trunk in flattish strips rather than typical stringybark. Juvenile growth (coppice or field seedlings to 50 cm): stem rounded in cross-section; juvenile leaves opposite and sessile for at least 10 pairs then becoming alternate, petiolate, ovate to lanceolate, 6.5–14 cm long, 2–4.2 cm wide, discolorous, slightly glossy, green or blue-green. Adult leaves alternate, petiole 0.5–2.3 cm long; blade lanceolate to falcate, 5–13(14) cm long, 0.9–2.5(3) cm wide, base oblique or tapering evenly to petiole, margin entire, concolorous, dull or glossy, green, side-veins between ca 40° and 50° to midrib, moderately to densely reticulate, intramarginal vein parallel to and well removed from margin, oil glands island, intersectional or obscure. Inflorescence axillary unbranched but often clustered towards the ends of branches and may appear to be terminal, peduncles 0.5–2.3 cm long, buds 11 to 15 per umbel, pedicels 0.3–0.4 cm long. Mature buds ovoid to fusiform, 0.5–0.6 cm long, 0.3 cm wide, green to yellow, scar absent, the single operculum shedding at flowering, operculum conical to beaked, stamens irregularly flexed, anthers reniform to cordate, versatile, dorsifixed, dehiscing by confluent slits, style long, locules 3 or 4, the placentae each with 2 vertical ovule rows. Flowers white. Fruit pedicellate (pedicels 0.2–0.5 cm long), truncate-globose to hemispherical or barrel-shaped, (0.3)0.4–0.6 cm long, 0.4–0.6(0.7) cm wide, disc descending vertically or concealed, valves 3 or 4, usually near rim level, rarely either exserted slightly or fully enclosed. Seeds brown, 1–2.5 mm long, pyramidal or obliquely pyramidal, dorsal surface smooth, hilum terminal. Cultivated seedlings (measured at ca node 10): cotyledons reniform; stems rounded in cross-section; leaves opposite and sessile for ca 9 or 10 nodes, ovate to lanceolate, 9–15 cm long, (1.5)3–4.5 cm wide, base amplexicaul to rounded, discolorous, green, becoming slightly glossy.
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