Mallee to 10 m tall. Forming a lignotuber. Bark either rough for basal 1.5 m of trunks, coarsely flaky, black-brown, or entirely smooth, grey-green to bronze-grey and whitish grey. Branchlets with a few pith oil glands (may need to inspect several branchlets). Juvenile growth (coppice or field seedlings to 50 cm): not seen. Adult leaves alternate, petioles 0.8–2.3 cm long; blade lanceolate, 6.5–11 cm long, 0.9–1.5 cm wide, base tapering to petiole, margin entire, apex pointed, concolorous, slightly glossy, light green, side-veins acute, reticulation moderate to dense, intramarginal vein remote from margin, oil glands island and intersectional. Inflorescence axillary unbranched, peduncles widening apically, 1–2 cm long, buds 9 or 11 per umbel, pedicels 0.2–0.3 cm long. Mature buds elongated-fusiform (2.3–2.9 cm long, 0.3–0.5 cm wide), often curved, scar present, operculum conical, two to three times the length of the hypanthium and equal to it in width at the join, few outer stamens erect, most stamens variably deflexed, anthers oblong, versatile, dorsifixed, dehiscing by longitudinal slits, style long and straight, stigma more or less tapered, locules 3, the placentae each with 4 vertical rows of ovules. Flowers yellow. Fruit pedicellate (pedicels 0.3–0.4 cm long), barrel-shaped to cylindrical, 1–1.1 cm long, 0.5–0.6 cm wide, disc descending vertically, valves 3, near rim level. Seeds mid-brown to straw-coloured, 0.8–1.5 mm long, sub-spherical to almost cuboid, surface smooth, hilum ventral/terminal. Cultivated seedlings (measured at ca node 10): cotyledons Y-shaped (bisected); stems rounded in cross-section, smooth or slightly warty; leaves always petiolate, opposite for 3 or 4 nodes then alternate, lanceolate, 7.5–13.5 cm long, 1.5–2.8 cm wide, glossy, mid-green.
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