Tree to 8 m tall. Forming a lignotuber. Bark rough on trunk, sometimes extending to small branches, fibrous, sometimes fissured and forming longitudinal slabs, sometimes tessellated in part, grey; smooth bark grey, grey-brown to pale orange. Juvenile growth (coppice or field seedlings to 50 cm): stems round in cross-section; juvenile leaves opposite for 5 to 10 nodes, then alternate, shorly petiolate, narrow-oblong, dull, green. Adult leaves alternate, petiole 0.8–2.1 cm long; blade lanceolate to falcate, 7–15 cm long, 0.9–2.2 cm wide, base tapering to petiole, concolorous, dull, green, side-veins greater than 45° to midrib, moderately to densely reticulate, intramarginal vein parallel to and just within margin, oil glands mostly island. Inflorescence axillary unbranched, peduncles 0.2–0.6 cm long, buds 7 per umbel, pedicels 0.2–0.3 cm long. Mature buds ovoid to obovoid, 0.4–0.5 cm long, 0.3–0.4 cm wide, green to yellow, smooth, scar present, operculum conical to rounded, stamens irregularly flexed, anthers cuboid to oblong, versatile, dorsifixed, dehiscing by longitudinal slits (non-confluent), 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), cup-shaped or hemispherical, 0.3–0.5 cm long, 0.3–0.6 cm wide, disc raised-convex or-oblique, valves 3 or 4, near rim level. Seeds brown, 1.5–2 mm long, ovoid or flattened-ovoid, lacunose, dorsal surface shallowly pitted, hilum ventral. Cultivated seedlings (measured at ca node 10): cotyledons bilobed; stems rounded in cross-section; leaves sessile to shortly petiolate, opposite for ca 5 nodes then alternate, linear to narrowly oblong, 4.5–5.5 cm long, 0.4–0.8 cm wide, base tapering, apex blunt or pointed, dull, green.
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