Mallee to 6 m tall. Forming a lignotuber.Bark rough for up to 1.5 m of trunk, light grey flaky box-type, smooth above, coppery to pale orange and grey.Branchlets lacking oil glands in the pith. Juvenile growth (coppice or field seedlings to 50 cm): stems square to rounded in cross-section; juvenile leaves always petiolate, alternate, ovate, 5.5–10 cm long, 3–6 cm wide, dull, grey-green.Adult leaves alternate, petiole 1.2–2.5 cm long; blade lanceolate, 8–13.5 cm long, 1.2–2 cm wide, base tapering to petiole, margin entire, apex pointed, concolorous, glossy, green, side-veins at an acute or wider angle, reticulation dense, intramarginal vein remote from margin, oil glands few, irregular, intersectional.Inflorescence terminal compound but often with some smaller compound inflorescences in the upper axils also, peduncles 0.5–1.5 cm long, buds 7 per umbel, pedicels 0.2–0.6 cm long. Mature buds obovoid to pyriform, ca 0.5 cm long, 0.3–0.4 cm wide, scar present, operculum usually rounded and apiculate, stamens inflexed, the outer filaments without anthers (staminodes), anthers more or less cuboid, adnate, sub-basifixed, dehiscing by subterminal pores, style long and straight, stigma blunt to scarcely pin-head shaped, locules 4 or 5, the placentae each with 4 vertical rows of ovules. Flowers creamy white.Fruit pedicellate (pedicels 0.1–0.5 cm long), obconical to cupular, 0.4–0.7 cm long, 0.4–0.5(0.6) cm wide, disc descending vertically, valves 4 or 5, enclosed deeply.Seeds brown, 0.5–1.5 mm long, ovoid to flattened-ovoid, dorsal surface clearly reticulate, hilum ventral.Cultivated seedlings (measured at node 10): cotyledons reniform; stems square in cross-section; leaves always petiolate, opposite for 3 to 6 nodes then alternate, ovate, 5.5–9 cm long, 3–5.5 cm wide, dull, green to light blue-green.
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