Mallee to 5 m tall. Forming a lignotuber.Bark smooth throughout or rough for up to half the trunk, finely fibrous persistent box-type, grey-brown, smooth bark pale grey to brownish and bronze or orange-pink. Branchlets lacking oil glands in the pith; usually not glaucous but wax noted on a specimen from Bold Cliff area. Juvenile growth (coppice or field seedlings to 50 cm): not seen.Adult leaves alternate, petioles 0.6–2.2 cm long; blade lanceolate, (5)7–14(17) cm long, 0.7–2(3.2) cm wide, base tapering to petiole, margin entire, apex pointed, concolorous, dull but when fully formed glossy, light green to blue-green, side-veins at an acute or wider angle to midrib, reticulation dense, intramarginal vein remote, oil glands conspicuous, intersectional. Inflorescence terminal compound, but occasionally single umbels in upper leaf axils also, peduncles thickened 0.6–1.6 cm long, buds 7, 9 and 11 per umbel, pedicels thickened angular 0–0.4 cm long. Mature buds obovoid, 0.5–0.6 cm long, 0.3–0.4 cm wide, scar present (outer operculum lost early in bud development), operculum broadly conical to rounded, stamens inflexed, the outer filaments without anthers (staminodes), inner filaments fertile, anthers more or less cuboid, adnate, sub-dorsifixed, dehiscing by sub-terminal pores, style long and straight, stigma blunt, locules 4 or 5, the placentae each with 4 vertical rows of ovules. Flowers creamy white. Fruit pedicellate or rarely sessile (pedicels 0–0.5 cm long), barrel-shaped to cylindrical, 0.4–0.9 cm long, 0.4–0.6 cm wide, disc descending, valves 4 or 5, enclosed or just below rim level, rim thickened. Seeds brown, 1–2 mm long, ovoid to flattened-ovoid, dorsal surface shallowly reticulate, hilum ventral.Cultivated seedlings (measured at node 10): cotyledons reniform; stems square in cross-section; leaves always petiolate, opposite for ca 5 or 6 nodes, then alternate, ovate to broadly lanceolate, 6.5–9.5 cm long, 1.7–2.6 cm wide, dull, green to weakly grey-green.
Home