Mallee to 3 m tall. Forming a lignotuber.Bark smooth, grey over bronze, yellow-green or coppery, rarely with a very short stocking of brown fibrous rough bark.Branchlets with oil glands in the pith mainly near the nodes, maybe quite sparse in the internodes. Juvenile growth (coppice or field seedlings to 50 cm): stems square to rounded in cross-section; juvenile leaves always petiolate, alternate, linear, often curved, 7–10.5 cm long, 0.4–0.7 cm wide, green. Adult leaves alternate, petioles 0.5–1.5 cm long; blade linear to narrowly lanceolate, 6–10 cm long, 0.5–1 cm wide, base tapering to petiole, margin entire, apex acute, concolorous, glossy, green, side-veins acute, reticulation sparse, intramarginal vein close to margin, oil glands numerous, island. Inflorescence axillary unbranched, peduncles 0.2–0.8 cm long, buds 7 per umbel, shortly and stoutly pedicellate (pedicels 0.2–0.3 cm long). Mature buds obovoid (0.4–0.8 cm long, 0.25–0.5 cm wide), scar present, operculum rounded or broadly conical, stamens inflexed and their filaments geniculate, all fertile, anthers cuboid to wedge-shaped, versatile, sub-basifixed, dehiscing by longitudinal slits, style long and straight, the base narrowed and inserted in a pit in ovary roof, stigma blunt to rounded, locules 3 or 4, the placentae each with 4 vertical rows of ovules. Flowers white. Fruit pedicellate (pedicels 0.1–0.4 cm long), cupular to obconical, 0.4–0.6 cm long, 0.4–0.6 cm wide, disc descending, valves 3 or 4, enclosed or near rim level. Seeds brown, 0.7–1.5 mm long, ovoid or flattened-ovoid, dorsal surface shallowly reticulate, hilum ventral.Cultivated seedlings (measured at node 10): cotyledons Y-shaped (bisected); stems rounded or square in cross-section; leaves always petiolate, opposite for 4 or 5 nodes then alternate, narrowly lanceolate to lanceolate, 9–12.5 cm long, 1–2.2 cm wide, grey-green, dull at lower nodes, later leaves becoming green and slightly glossy.
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