Mallee to 4 m tall. Forming a lignotuber.Bark smooth throughout, silvery white to greenish grey and coppery, or with a very short basal stocking of rough flaky grey-brown to blackish bark.Branchlets with oil glands in the pith.Juvenile growth (coppice or field seedlings to 50 cm): stems rounded in cross-section; juvenile leaves always petiolate, alternate, ovate-lanceolate, 6–9 cm long, (0.8)1.5–3 cm wide, dull, blue to blue-green, sometimes slightly glaucous.Adult leaves alternate, petioles 0.5–2.6 cm long; blade lanceolate to narrowly so to slightly falcate, 5–11.5 cm long, 0.6–2 cm wide, base tapering to petiole, margin entire, apex finely pointed (like a drip-tip), dull to glossy, green, side-veins acute, reticulation clear, sparse to moderate, intramarginal vein present, oil glands numerous, island.Inflorescence axillary unbranched, peduncles spreading to down-turned, slender, flattened apically, 1–2.5 cm long, buds 7 per umbel, pedicels 0.1–0.8(1.8) cm long. Mature buds bluntly elongated (1.8–2.7 cm long, 0.4–0.8 cm wide), faintly striate longitudinally to almost smooth, scar present (outer operculum lost early), inner operculum elongated conical to horn-shaped and blunt or narrowed at the tip, longer than the hypanthium, stamens erect, anthers oblong, versatile, dorsifixed, dehiscing by longitudinal slits, style long and straight, stigma blunt, locules (3)4(5), the placentae each with 4 vertical rows of ovules. Flowers creamy white, rarely slightly lemon yellow.Fruit pedicellate (pedicels 0.3–1 cm long), cupular-obconical to campanulate, 0.7–1.2 cm long, 0.7–1.2 cm wide, disc level at first then descending, valves (3)4(5), held at about rim level or scarcely exserted.Seeds blackish brown, 0.7–2 mm long, ovoid to flattened-ovoid, dorsal surface clearly and shallowly reticulate, hilum ventral.Cultivated seedlings (measured at node 10): cotyledons Y-shaped (bisected); stems rounded to square in cross-section, smooth or slightly warty; leaves always petiolate, opposite for ca 5 nodes then becoming alternate, broadly lanceolate, 4–9.5 cm wide, 1.4–3.5 cm wide, dull, green to blue-green, apex rounded or pointed.
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