Mallee to 4 m tall. Forming a lignotuber.Bark smooth throughout, grey to pale coppery.Branchlets with pith glands restricted to nodes.Juvenile growth (coppice or field seedlings to 50 cm): stems rounded to square in cross-section, smooth; juvenile leaves always petiolate, opposite for very few nodes then alternate, orbicular to ovate or deltoid, 4–7 cm long, 3–5.5 cm wide, base rounded to tapering, apex rounded to broadly pointed, green, glossy.Adult leaves alternate, petioles 1.8–2.5 cm long; blade broadly lanceolate to lanceolate, 7.3–12 cm long, 1.2–3 cm wide, (Most herbarium specimens, and therefore plants, appear to have intermediate leaves with fully adult leaves being to 12 cm long and Inflorescence axillary unbranched, peduncles stout, 0.5–1.5 cm long, buds 7 or 9 (rarely 11) per umbel, almost sessile or pedicellate, pedicels 0.1–0.5 cm long. Mature buds ovoid to obovoid (0.7–1.1 cm long, 0.4–0.6 cm wide), scar present, operculum rounded and as wide as hypanthium (0.3–0.4 cm long), stamens inflexed, anthers cuboid to wedge-shaped, versatile, dorsifixed, dehiscing by longitudinal slits, style long and straight, stigma more or less rounded, locules 4 or 5, the placentae each with 4 vertical rows of ovules. Flowers white.Fruit sessile or pedicellate (pedicels 0–0.3 cm long), cylindrical to cupular-obconical, 0.6–1.1 cm long, 0.7–0.8 cm wide, slightly ribbed or not, disc descending, valves 4 or 5, to rim level.Seeds reddish brown and glossy, 1.5–3.2 mm long, flattened-ovoid and somewhat angular in outline, dorsal surface often lacunose, shallowly reticulate, hilum ventral.Cultivated seedlings (measured at ca node 10): cotyledons reniform; stems square in cross-section; leaves always petiolate, opposite for 4 to 7 nodes then alternate, ovate, 3.5–8 cm long, 3–4.5 cm wide, dull, green.
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