Tree to 20 m tall. Forming a lignotuber.Ironbark, dark grey to black. Branches ca 5 cm diameter or narrower often smoothed-barked. Branchlets sometimes glaucous with oil glands sometimes present in the pith.Juvenile growth (coppice or field seedlings to 50 cm): stem round to square in cross-section; juvenile leaves opposite for a few pairs, petiolate, becoming alternate, lanceolate, 6–9.5 cm long, 1.5–3.5 cm wide, glaucous.Adult leaves alternate, petiole 1.5–3(3.5) cm long; blade lanceolate to broadly lanceolate to falcate, 8–17 cm long, 1.5–3.5 cm wide, base tapering to petiole, concolorous, dull, grey-green to blue-grey to glaucous, side-veins usually at an angle less than 45° to the midrib, densely to very densely reticulate, intramarginal vein parallel to and well removed from the margin, oil glands sparse and intersectional or often absent.Inflorescence terminal compound, or axillary compound or sometimes axillary single, peduncles 0.8–2 cm long, buds 7 per umbel, pedicels 0.3–0.7 cm long. Mature buds obovoid, 0.6–0.7 cm long, 0.3–0.4 cm wide, sometimes glaucous, scar present, operculum conical to rounded and often slightly narrower than the hypanthium, stamens inflexed, with outer staminodes, anthers adnate, positioned obliquely at filament tip, cuboid, dehiscing by terminal pores, style long, stigma pin-head, locules 4 or 5, the placentae each with 4 vertical ovule rows. Flowers white.Fruit sometimes glaucous but this wax fading with age, pedicels 0.2–0.6 cm long, barrel-shaped to cup-shaped, 0.6–0.9 cm long, 0.4–0.8 cm wide, sometimes with longitudinal ribs that become more prominent near the base of the hypanthium, disc descending, valves 4 or 5, enclosed.Seeds brown, 1–1.5 mm long, flattened-ovoid, shallowly reticulate, hilum ventral. Cultivated seedlings (measured at ca node 10): cotyledons reniform to oblong; stems square in cross-section, glaucous; leaves always petiolate, opposite for ca 2 to 4 nodes then alternate, lanceolate to broadly lanceolate, 8–13 cm long, 1.7–4 cm wide, base tapering, blue-grey to glaucous.
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