Tree to 8 m tall, sometimes a mallee. Forming a lignotuber. Bark rough on trunk and larger branches, shortly fibrous or box-type, thin and flaky, grey and grey-brown smooth bark coppery, brown, grey-green, or grey. Branchlets are rarely glaucous. Juvenile growth (coppice or field seedlings to 50 cm): stem rounded in cross-section, glaucous or non-glaucous; juvenile leaves always petiolate, opposite for 5 or 6 nodes then alternate, orbicular to ovate, 3.5–8 cm long, 3.5–6.5 cm wide, base rounded or truncate, apex broadly pointed to rounded or emarginate, margin usually entire, green to blue-green or glaucous. Adult leaves alternate, petiole 1–3 cm long; blade broadly lanceolate to ovate or elliptical, (3.3)5–15 cm long, 3–6.5 cm wide, flat or undulate, base tapering to petiole, apex broadly pointed or emarginate, concolorous, dull or glossy, green to blue-green, rarely slightly glaucous, side-veins greater than 45° to midrib, densely to very densely reticulate, intramarginal vein parallel to and well removed from margin and looped, oil glands island and intersectional. Inflorescence terminal compound, sometimes axillary unbranched or axillary compound (in subterminal axils), peduncles 0.5–1.3 cm long, buds 7 per umbel, pedicels 0.1–0.6 cm long. Mature buds obovoid, ca 0.5 cm long, 0.3–0.5 cm wide, glaucous or red to green, scar present (outer operculum shed early), inner operculum conical to beaked, stamens inflexed, outer filaments lack anthers (staminodes), anthers adnate, basally attached and positioned obliquely at filament tip, cuboid, dehiscing by terminal pores, style long, stigma blunt or pin-head shaped, locules usually 3, the placentae each with 4 vertical ovule rows. Flowers white, or pale yellow to lemon. Fruit on pedicels 0.1–0.6 cm long, obconical, 0.5–0.9 cm long, 0.5–0.9 cm wide, glaucous or non-glaucous, rim thin, often splitting, disc descending, valves 3 or 4, enclosed. Seeds brown, 0.8–2 mm long, ovoid or flattened-ovoid, dorsal surface pitted, hilum ventral. Cultivated seedlings (measured at ca node 10): cotyledons reniform to oblong; stems rounded in cross-section; leaves always petiolate, opposite for 4 or 5 nodes then alternate, ovate to orbicular, 4–6 cm long, 4.5–6.5 cm wide, base truncate to tapering, margin entire, apex rounded to emarginate, green.
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