Mallee to 5 m tall. Forming a lignotuber.Bark smooth throughout, silvery grey and cream-grey over pale brown-orange. Branchlets lacking oil glands in the pith. Juvenile growth (coppice or field seedlings to 50 cm): stems rounded in cross-section; juvenile leaves always petiolate, opposite for several nodes but soon alternate, ovate, ca 3.5–6 cm long, 2–3 cm wide, green or grey-green. Adult leaves alternate, petioles 1–2 cm long; blade narrowly lanceolate to falcate, 7–8.3 cm long, 1.3–2.4 cm wide, base tapering to petiole, margin entire, apex pointed, concolorous, maturing glossy dark green, side-veins usually at an acute angle to midrib, reticulation dense, intramarginal vein close to margin, oil glands intersectional or fairly obscure. Inflorescence axillary unbranched, peduncles slender and pendulous, 0.6–1.4 cm long, buds 11 to 15 per umbel, on slender pedicels 0.4–1 cm long sharply defined relative to the truncate base of bud. Mature buds ovoid, 1.3–2 cm long, 0.4–0.6 cm wide, the operculum 2.5 to 5 times the length of the hypanthium which tapers very little below the join, and is not or scarcely ribbed, scar present (outer operculum lost early), operculum long conical to quite elongated and not ribbed, stamens inflexed, anthers cuboid, versatile, sub-basifixed, dehiscing by longitudinal slits, style long and straight, stigma blunt, locules 3 or 4, the placentae each with 4 vertical rows of ovules. Flowers creamy white or rarely yellowish. Fruit pendulous, pedicellate (pedicels 0.3–1 cm long), truncate-globose to hemispherical, 0.5–0.9(1.2) cm long, 0.6–1(1.2) cm wide, usually not ribbed, disc descending or level, valves 3 or 4, slender and prominently exserted but fragile and easily lost. Seeds dark grey-brown to brown, 1.2–2 mm long, ovoid or flattened-ovoid, dorsal surface smooth to very shallowly reticulate, hilum ventral.Cultivated seedlings (measured at node 10): cotyledons Y-shaped (bisected); stems rounded in cross-section; leaves opposite for at least 12 nodes, sessile at first, becoming shortly petiolate, initially linear then elliptical for ca 7 to 12 nodes when they become ovate-elliptical, 3–5 cm long, 2–3.2 cm wide, base tapering to rounded, margin entire, apex rounded to acute, green to grey-green, dull.
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