Mallee to 7 m tall. Forming a lignotuber.Bark smooth throughout, dark satiny pink-brown to pink-grey or dark red shedding in thin sheets to reveal powdery creamy white.Branchlets with oil glands in the pith, non-glaucous.Juvenile growth (coppice or field seedlings to 50 cm): not seen.Adult leaves alternate, petioles 0.3–1.5 cm long; blade lanceolate to narrowly so, 3–8.5(11) cm long, 0.5–1.5 cm wide, base tapering to petiole, margin entire, apex pointed, concolorous, olive-green to green, glossy, side-veins acute, reticulation sparse or obscure, broken, intramarginal vein present, oil glands very numerous, more or less round.Inflorescence axillary unbranched, pendulous, peduncles terete, slender, 1.3–4.5 cm long, buds 3(7) per umbel, long-pedicellate (pedicels 1.3–2.7(4) cm long). Mature buds broadly fusiform (2–3 cm long, 0.9–1.5 cm wide) with a prominent encircling flange on the hypanthium immediately below the join with the operculum, hypanthium usually irregularly ribbed, scar present (outer operculum shed very early), inner operculum conical or beaked, a few outer stamens fully erect but most stamens variably to fully inflexed, anthers oblong, versatile, dorsifixed, dehiscing by longitudinal slits, style long and straight, stigma blunt to tapered, locules 4 or 5, the placentae each with 6 vertical rows of ovules; inner operculum sheds at flowering leaving a conspicuous broad vertical scar encircling the developing fruit. Flowers reddish (or rarely creamy yellow).Fruit down-turned, pedicellate (pedicels 1.3–2.5(4) cm long), obconical with an encircling flange conspicuous below the broad vertical inner operculum abscission scar, 0.8–1.5 cm long, 1–1.8 cm wide, ribbed or virtually smooth, disc usually level to gently descending, valves 4 or 5, rim level to scarcely exserted.Seeds brown, 0.5–2 mm long, ovoid to flattened-ovoid, dorsal surface clearly and shallowly reticulate, hilum ventral.Cultivated seedlings (measured at node 10): cotyledons Y-shaped (bisected); stems rounded in cross-section, warty; leaves always petiolate, opposite for 4 to 6 nodes then alternate, lanceolate, 6.5–11.5 cm long, 1.2–2.5 cm wide, green to grey-green, dull at first.
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