Mallee to 6 m tall. Forming a lignotuber. Bark rough, hard, grey, fissured, over most or all of trunks, smooth grey above. Branchlets with sparse pale small pith oil glands (sometimes absent or hard to find). Juvenile growth (coppice or field seedlings to 50 cm): stems rounded in cross-section; juvenile leaves always petiolate, alternate, ovate, 3.5–7.5 cm long, 2–4 cm wide, greyish green. Adult leaves alternate, petioles 1–2 cm long; blade lanceolate, 5.5–12 cm long, 0.8–2.5 cm wide, base tapering to petiole, margin entire, apex pointed, concolorous, glossy, green, side-veins greater than 45° to midrib, reticulation dense, erose, intramarginal vein close to margin, oil glands intersectional or apparently absent. Inflorescence axillary unbranched, peduncles 0.6–1.2 cm long, buds 7 per umbel, sessile to shortly pedicellate (pedicels 0–0.3 cm long). Mature buds ovoid to fusiform (c. 1.1 cm long, 0.4–0.5 cm wide), longitudinally striate, scar present, operculum conical to stoutly beaked (0.5–0.6 cm long), stamens inflexed, anthers cuboid to wedge-shaped, versatile, dorsifixed, dehiscing by longitudinal slits, style long and straight, stigma blunt, locules 3, the placentae each with 4 vertical rows of ovules. Flowers white. Fruit sessile to shortly pedicellate (pedicels 0–0.4 cm long), cylindrical or barrel-shaped, faintly ribbed longitudinally, 0.8–1 cm long, 0.6–0.8 cm wide, disc descending vertically, valves 3, enclosed. Seeds brown, 1.5–3 mm long, flattened-pyramidal to flattened-ovoid, dorsal surface shallowly but conspicuously reticulate, ventral surface ridged, narrow marginal flange more prominent on one side of seed, hilum ventral/terminal. Cultivated seedlings (measured at node 10): cotyledons reniform; stems rounded or square in cross-section; leaves always petiolate, opposite for 3 or 4 nodes then alternate, lanceolate, 6–7.5 cm long, 2–2.5 cm wide, dull, grey-green.
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