Straggly tree to 4 m tall. Forming a lignotuber.Bark rough, grey and grey-brown, thin, fibrous, shallowly fissured down trunk, breaking into short strips, quite tessellated on older trunks.Juvenile growth (coppice or field seedlings to 50 cm): stem square in cross-section on lower growth; juvenile leaves opposite for ca 14 to 23 pairs, becoming alternate (may then revert to opposite for several nodes), very shortly petiolate, elliptical to ovate, 4.5–12 cm long, 1.3–5.5 cm wide, base tapering to petiole or rounded, margin usually entire, rarely crenulate, glossy, green.Adult leaves alternate, petiolate, 1–2.8 cm long; blade lanceolate to falcate, 8–15 cm long1.7–3 cm wide, base tapering to petiole, margin entire, concolorous, glossy, green, side-veins at an acute or wider angle to midrib, densely reticulate, intramarginal vein parallel to and well removed from margin, oil glands sparse, island and intersectional.Inflorescence axillary single, peduncles 0.4–1 cm long, buds 7 per umbel, pedicels 0–0.2 cm long. Mature buds fusiform to obovoid, 0.5–0.6 cm long, 0.4 cm wide, smooth, scar present, operculum bluntly conical, stamens mostly inflexed with some irregularly flexed, all fertile, anthers cuboid, versatile, sub-basifixed, dehiscing by longitudinal slits (non-confluent), style long, stigma blunt or more or less pin-head, locules 3 or 4, with 4 vertical ovule rows on the placenta.Fruit usually sessile (rarely only 0.1 cm long), hemispherical or cup-shaped, 0.4–0.6 cm long, 0.5–0.8 cm wide, disc raised, valves 3 or 4, exserted or near rim level.Seeds black, grey or brown, 1.5–3 mm long, ovoid or flattened-ovoid or pointed at one end, usually lacunose, dorsal surface shallowly pitted, hilum ventral. Cultivated seedlings (measured at ca node 10): cotyledons bilobed to oblong; stems square in cross-section for at least 18 nodes, warty; leaves sessile and opposite for at least 18-24 nodes, ovate to lanceolate, 4.7–10.5 cm long, (1.3)1.8–3.2 cm wide, base rounded, never stem-clasping, green.
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