Tree to 10 m tall. Forming a lignotuber.Bark rough on part or all of trunk, sometimes extending to the largest limbs, box-type or sometimes tessellated, grey, grey-brown or blackish, upper bark smooth, powdery, white, cream, pale grey or pink.Branchlets lack oil glands in the pith; non-glaucous or rarely glaucous.Juvenile growth (coppice or field seedlings to 50 cm): stems usually square in cross-section; juvenile leaves always petiolate, opposite, a few pairs then alternate, lanceolate, 4–13 cm long, 0.5–3 cm wide, base tapering to petiole, dull, blue-green to blue-grey or slightly glaucous.Adult leaves alternate, petiole 0.8–2 cm long; blade lanceolate to falcate, 8–17 cm long, 1–2.5 cm wide, base tapering to petiole, concolorous, dull, green to blue-green or grey-green, side-veins greater than 45° to midrib, dense to very densely reticulate, intramarginal vein parallel to and just within margin, oil glands obscure or absent, when present, sparse intersectional.Inflorescence mostly terminal compound, peduncles 0.3–1 cm long, buds 7 per umbel, pedicels 0.1–0.4 cm long.Mature buds ovoid, 0.3–0.5 cm long, 0.2–0.4 cm wide, often glaucous, or yellow, scar present (outer operculum lost early), operculum conical, stamens irregularly flexed, anthers adnate, cuboid to globular, dehiscing by broad lateral pores, style long, stigma blunt, locules 3 or 4, the placentae each with 4 vertical ovule rows.Flowers white.Fruit pedicellate (pedicels 0.1–0.3 cm long), rarely subsessile, hemispherical or obconical, 0.2–0.4 (–0.5) cm long, 0.3–0.5 cm wide and long, thin-walled, disc descending, valves 3 or 4, strongly exserted.Seeds brown to reddish brown to yellow-brown, lustrous, 1–2 mm long, ovoid and slightly angular to flattened-ovoid, dorsal surface shallowly reticulate, hilum ventral.