Tree to 30 m tall. Forming a lignotuber. Bark rough throughout or branches less than 8 cm diameter smooth; rough bark finely fibrous (peppermint-type), grey or grey-brown; smooth bark white or grey, often with scribbles, branchlets glaucous or non-glaucous. Juvenile growth (coppice or field seedlings to 50 cm): stem rounded in cross-section, warty; juvenile leaves opposite, sessile, lanceolate to ovate, 4–9 cm long, 1.3–3.2 cm wide, grey-green or green. New growth tips on coppice and in mature crowns conspicuously pink-brown, non-glaucous. Adult leaves opposite or alternate, petiole 1–2.5 cm long; blade lanceolate to falcate, 8–18 cm long, 1.2–4.2 cm wide, base oblique or tapering to petiole, concolorous, dull, blue-grey, grey-green or green, side-veins acute, sparsely to moderately reticulate, intramarginal vein parallel to and well removed from margin, oil glands island. Inflorescence axillary unbranched, peduncles 0.3–1.5 cm long, buds 9 to 19 (?or more) per umbel, pedicels 0.1–0.5 cm long. Mature buds obovoid or clavate, 0.3–0.5 cm long, 0.2–0.3 cm wide, glaucous when young, maturing green, scar absent, operculum usually conical to rounded, stamens inflexed or irregularly flexed, anthers reniform to cordate, versatile, dorsifixed, dehiscing by confluent slits (usually), style short or long, stigma blunt or tapered, locules 3 or 4, the placentae each with 2 vertical ovule rows. Flowers white. Fruit pedicellate (pedicels 0.1–0.4 cm long), hemispherical, truncate-globose or cup-shaped, 0.4–0.6 cm long, 0.4–0.6 cm wide, sometimes glaucous, disc level or descending, valves 3 or 4, near rim level or enclosed. Seeds dark brown or reddish brown, 1–2.5 mm long, pyramidal or obliquely pyramidal, dorsal surface smooth, hilum terminal. Cultivated seedlings (measured at ca node 10): cotyledons reniform; stems rounded in cross-section, warty; leaves sessile and opposite for many nodes, cordate to lanceolate, 3–8.5 cm long, 1–4 cm wide, base amplexicaul, dull, blue-green to grey-green.
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