Mallee to 5 m tall. Forming a lignotuber. Bark smooth, grey, white, light pinkish grey or salmon, sometimes becoming granular with age, shedding in long strips. Branchlets lacking oil glands in the pith. Juvenile growth (coppice or field seedlings to 50 cm): stems usually rounded in cross-section, glaucous or non-glaucous; juvenile leaves sessile, opposite (sometimes a few sub-opposite), becoming alternate and petiolate at upper nodes, elliptic-oblong to lanceolate, 1.5–6 cm long, 0.5–2.5 cm wide, glaucous at first then dull blue-green. Adult leaves alternate, petiole 0.4–1.3 cm long; blade narrowly lanceolate to oblong to linear or falcate, 3–9 cm long, 0.3–1.3 cm wide, base tapering to petiole, concolorous, glossy, green, side-veins greater than 45° to midrib, densely to very densely reticulate, intramarginal vein parallel to and just within margin, oil glands mostly intersectional. Inflorescence axillary unbranched, peduncles 0.3–1 cm long, buds 7 to 13 per umbel, usually pedicellate, rarely sessile (pedicels 0–0.4 cm long). Mature buds fusiform to ovoid (0.4–0.7 cm long, 0.25–0.35 cm wide), green to yellow to red, scar present, operculum usually bluntly conical (0.2–0.35 cm wide), stamens inflexed, 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, rarely with an obvious apical twist, stigma tapered, locules 3 or 4, the placentae each with 4 vertical rows of ovules. Flowers creamy white. Fruit pedicellate (pedicels 0.1–0.4 cm long), cup-shaped, shortly barrel-shaped or hemispherical, 0.3–0.6 cm long, 0.3–0.6 cm wide, disc pale, level or descending, valves 3 or 4, more or less enclosed or near rim level. Seeds brown, 0.8–2 mm long, flattened-ovoid, sometimes with furrows on the virtually smooth dorsal surface, hilum ventral. Cultivated seedlings (measured at node 10): cotyledons Y-shaped (bisected); stems rounded in cross-section, sometimes glaucous, smooth to slightly warty; leaves sessile, opposite for 7–16 nodes then alternate, ovate-elliptic to narrowly oblong, 1–4.5 cm long, 0.5–2 cm wide, base tapering to rounded, never amplexicaul, grey to grey-green or slightly glaucous above and quite glaucous below.
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