Mallee to 3 m tall. Forming a lignotuber. Bark smooth throughout, whitish grey. Branchlets with a few pith oil glands but sometimes small and difficult to find. Juvenile growth (coppice or field seedlings to 50 cm): stems rounded in cross-section; juvenile leaves always petiolate, alternate, narrowly elliptical to lanceolate, 3.5–6 cm long, 0.7–1.5 cm wide, dull, bluish green. Adult leaves alternate, petioles 0.5–1.7 cm long; blade linear to narrowly lanceolate, 4–9 cm long, 0.5–1.3 cm wide, base tapering to petiole, margin entire, apex pointed, concolorous, dull to slightly glossy, green, acute side-veins present or all venation except midrib obscured by numerous round oil glands. Inflorescence axillary unbranched, peduncles 0.5–1.5 cm long, buds 7, 9 or 11 per umbel, pedicels short and stout, 0.3–0.5 cm long. Mature buds more or less cylindrical (0.6–0.7 cm long, 0.4–0.5 cm wide), always with a constriction at join of hypanthium and operculum, scar present, operculum flattened with a conspicuous but short beak or an apiculum, stamens inflexed, anthers oblong, versatile, dorsifixed, dehiscing by longitudinal slits, style long and straight, stigma broadly rounded, locules 4, the placentae each with 4 vertical rows of ovules. Flowers white. Fruit pedicellate (pedicels 0.3–0.5 cm long), shortly barrel-shaped to obconical, 0.5–0.7 cm long, 0.5–0.8 cm wide, disc descending, valves 4, at rim level. Seeds mid-brown, 0.5–1.5 mm long, flattened-ovoid, dorsal surface shallowly and clearly reticulate, hilum ventral. Cultivated seedlings (measured at node 10): cotyledons oblong-reniform; stems rounded in cross-section; leaves always petiolate, opposite for 4 to 6 nodes then alternate, lanceolate to narrowly so, 4.5–6 cm long, 0.8–1.5 cm wide, dull green to grey-green.
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