Tree to 10 m tall, but sometimes a mallee. Some plants seem to form a lignotuber. Bark smooth throughout, pink to orange and white. Branchlets lacking oil glands in the pith. Juvenile growth (coppice or field seedlings to 50 cm): stems rounded in cross-section; juvenile leaves very shortly petiolate, lowest leaves sub-opposite soon becoming alternate, linear, 3–7.5 cm long, 0.3–0.6 cm wide, dull, grey-green until ca 0.5 m tall then glossy, green. Adult leaves alternate, petioles 0.4–1.2 cm long; blade linear to narrowly falcate, 6–11 cm long, 0.4–1 cm wide, base tapering to petiole, margin entire, apex pointed, green, glossy, side-veins at an acute or wider angle to midrib, intramarginal vein present, moderately to densely reticulate or the reticulation obscured by the very numerous, large, intersectional oil glands. Inflorescence axillary unbranched, peduncles narrow, only slightly flattened, 0.4–1 cm long, buds 7 or 9 per umbel, pedicellate (pedicels 0.2–0.4 cm long). Mature buds small, ovoid to diamond-shaped (0.6–0.8 cm long, 0.3–0.4 cm wide), scar present, operculum conical to beaked (0.4 cm long), stamens inflexed (rarely 1 or 2 irregularly placed), anthers cuneate-cuboid, adnate to filament apex (rigidly basifixed), dehiscing by sub-terminal pores, a few of the innermost stamens imperfectly formed, style long and straight or slightly but obviously twisted apically, stigma tapered, locules 3(4), the placentae each with 4 vertical rows of ovules. Flowers creamy white. Fruit pedicellate (pedicels 0.1–0.3 cm long), cupular to obconical or hemispherical, 0.3–0.5 cm long, 0.4–0.5 cm wide, disc level to descending, valves 3(4), rim level to slightly exserted. Seeds brown to grey-brown, 1–2 mm long, flattened-ovoid, dorsal surface usually furrowed longitudinally but otherwise smooth, hilum ventral. Cultivated seedlings (measured at node 10): cotyledons Y-shaped (bisected); stems rounded in cross-section, very warty; leaves sessile throughout, opposite for 7 to 23 nodes, becoming subopposite then alternate, linear-oblong, incurved, 1.5–3 cm long, 0.3–0.8 cm wide, the margins minutely denticulate due to warts, discolorous, mid to dark green above. The seedlings are conspicuously warty.
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