Tree or mallee to 15 m tall. Forming a lignotuber. Bark rough on the lower 2–3 m of trunk, dark grey to almost black, hard scaly-fibrous, flaky; smooth bark, white to grey to pale pink to pale orange; sometimes slightly powdery. Branchlets glaucous; lacking oil glands in the pith. Juvenile growth (coppice or field seedlings to 50 cm): stems glaucous, square in cross-section and prominently winged where leaf bases are decurrent; juvenile leaves opposite to alternate, sessile to shortly petiolate, broadly lanceolate to ovate to elliptical, 4–10 cm long, 2–4 cm wide, dull and glaucous, leaf bases decurrent, rounded to tapering further up the stem. Adult leaves alternate, petiole (1.5)2–3(3.5) cm long; blade lanceolate to broadly lanceolate, 8–16 cm long, 1.3–3 cm wide, base tapering to petiole, concolorous, dull, blue-green to grey-green, side-veins usually at an acute angle to midrib, sometimes wider, densely reticulate, intramarginal vein parallel to and just within margin, oil glands numerous and mostly intersectional. Inflorescence axillary unbranched, peduncles 0.5–1.3(1.6) cm long, usually pendulous; buds 7, pedicellate, pedicels 0.5–1 cm long. Mature buds ± ovoid to oblong (1.3–2.5 cm long, 0.6–0.8 cm wide), glaucous, scar present, operculum beaked to horn-shaped (0.7–1.8 cm long), stamens inflexed, anthers versatile, basifixed, globoid to cuboid, dehiscing by slits, style long, stigma tapered, locules 4, the placentae each with 4 vertical ovule rows. Flowers pale yellow. Fruit erect to down-turned, pedicellate (pedicels 0.5–1 cm long), barrel-shaped to truncate-globose, rarely urceolate, glaucous but glaucescence weathering with age, 0.7–1 cm long, 0.8–1.2 cm wide, disc descending, valves 4, valve tips strongly exserted due to fragile style remnants. Seeds glossy brown to grey, 1.5–2.2 mm long, ovoid or flattened-ovoid, rarely pointed at one end, occasionally with shallow longitudinal furrows on otherwise smooth dorsal surface, hilum ventral. Cultivated seedlings (measured at node 10): cotyledons Y-shaped (bisected); stems square in cross-section and prominently winged due to decurrent leaf bases, slightly glaucous; leaves opposite, sessile, ovate to elliptical, dull grey-green to slightly glaucous, 2.5–8 cm long, 1.8–4 cm wide, leaf base decurrent on stem.
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