Mallet to 12 m tall. Lignotuber absent.Bark smooth throughout, dark and whitish grey over brownish, or mottled with imperfectly shed flakes of brown-grey rough bark.Branchlets with oil glands in the pith, rarely glands few and hard to find.Juvenile growth (coppice or wild seedling to 50 cm tall): not seen. Adult leaves alternate, petioles 0.5–1.5 cm long; blade linear to lanceolate, 4.5–9.5 cm long, 0.5–2 cm wide, base tapering to petiole, margin entire, apex pointed, concolorous, glossy, dark green, side-veins about 45° to midrib or more, reticulation dense, intramarginal vein more or less remote from margin, oil glands island and intersectional.Inflorescence axillary unbranched, peduncles widening apically, 0.7–2 cm long, buds 9 to 13 per umbel, pedicels 0.4–0.5 cm long. Mature buds fusiform to very elongated (1.4–2.1 cm long, 0.3–0.4 cm wide), curved or straight, scar present, operculum conical to horn-shaped, twice to three times the length of the hypanthium and equal to it in width at the join, few outer stamens erect, most stamens variably deflexed, anthers oblong, versatile, dorsifixed, dehiscing by longitudinal slits, style long and straight, stigma tapered, locules 3, the placentae each with 4 vertical rows of ovules. Flowers pale yellow.Fruit pedicellate (pedicels 0.3–0.6 cm long), barrel-shaped to obconical or cylindrical, 0.6–1 cm long, 0.5–0.6 cm wide, disc descending vertically, valves 3, about rim level.Seeds straw-coloured, 0.7–1.5 mm long, sub-spherical, surface smooth, hilum ventral/terminal.Cultivated seedlings (measured at ca node 10): cotyledons Y-shaped (bisected); stems rounded to obscurely triangular in cross-section; leaves petiolate, opposite for ca 2 to 4 nodes then alternate, ovate to lanceolate, 5–9 cm long, 1–3 cm wide, dull, slightly bluish green becoming green and slightly glossy by ca node 9–10.
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