Usually a mallee to 8 m tall, rarely a slightly taller tree. Forming a lignotuber. Bark usually rough over most of the lower stem, hard, fibrous, flaky, grey to brown; occasionally completely smooth-barked, smooth bark grey over coppery-brown, rarely white and slightly powdery. Branchlets lacking oil glands in the pith. Juvenile growth (coppice or field seedlings to 50 cm): not seen. Adult leaves alternate, petiole 1–2 cm long; blade lanceolate, 5.5–11 cm long, 0.7–1.6(2) cm wide, base tapering to petiole, concolorous, glossy green, side-veins at an acute or wider angle to midrib, densely to very densely reticulate, intramarginal vein parallel to and just within margin or, rarely, confluent with margin, oil glands relatively sparse and mostly intersectional. Inflorescence axillary unbranched, peduncles 0.7–1.7 cm long, buds usually more than 7 up to ?15, pedicellate, pedicels 0.3–0.7 cm long. Mature buds narrowly ovoid to fusiform (0.7–1.2 cm long, 0.2–0.6 cm wide), scar present, operculum conical to horn-shaped (0.4–0.9 cm long), stamens irregularly flexed, anthers adnate to weakly versatile, basifixed, globoid, dehiscing by lateral pores, style long, stigma tapered, locules 3 or 4, the placentae each with 4 vertical ovule rows. Flowers white. Fruit pedicellate (pedicels 0.3–0.8 cm long), truncate-globose, 0.4–0.6 cm long, 0.4–0.6 cm wide, disc descending, valves 3 or 4, valve tips strongly exserted due to fragile style remnants. Seeds light brown to grey, 1–2 mm long, ovoid or flattened-ovoid, occasionally with shallow longitudinal furrows on otherwise smooth dorsal surface, hilum ventral. Cultivated seedlings (measured at node 10): cotyledons Y-shaped (bisected); stems appearing rounded to square in cross-section, rarely slightly warty; leaves opposite, petiolate, dull grey-green for the first 5 to 7 nodes then alternate, petiolate, ovate to lanceolate further up the stem, 5.5–9 cm long, 1.3–3.2 cm wide, glossy to dull green.
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