Marlock (single-stemmed shrub branching low) or mallet 0.5 to 3 m tall. Lignotuber absent.Bark smooth throughout, pale grey and whitish.Branchlets lacking oil glands in the pith. Juvenile growth (coppice or field seedlings to 50 cm): true juvenile growth not seen (post-fire regrowth that is less ca 3 years old, less than 0.5 m tall and not yet reproductive has foliage the same as adult crowns).Adult leaves held erect, alternate, petioles 0.2–0.8 cm long; blade linear to narrowly elliptic-oblong, 4.5–8 cm long, 0.5–1 cm wide, base tapering to petiole, margin entire, apex rounded and with a black warty mucro, concolorous, glossy, mid green, side-veins at an acute or wider angle to midrib (angle of lateral veins variable even within a single leaf), reticulation moderate to dense, broken, intramarginal veins remote from margin and often prominent giving the appearance of 3 main veins, oil glands obscurely island.Inflorescence axillary unbranched, peduncles more or less terete and spreading 3–5 cm long, buds ca 21 to 50 per umbel, pedicels absent. Buds syncarpous (all of the buds in a cluster are joined by the hypanthium only, the upper part of each bud remains free, at maturity the combined length of the fused part plus operculum is ca 5–7 cm, whilst width of individual buds measured at the base of the operculum is 0.4–0.5 cm); scar present (outer operculum lost early) but may be obscure at bud maturity, operculum narrow straight to slightly curved, 4.3–6 cm long, warty at the tip, stamens erect, anthers narrowly oblong, versatile, dorsifixed, dehiscing by longitudinal slits, style long and straight, stigma blunt, small, locules 3, the placentae each with 4 vertical rows of ovules. Flowers greenish.Fruit a syncarpous, spherical mass on spreading rounded peduncle, the individual fruit in the woody mass 0.6–1 cm wide, length not measurable, dehiscing by elliptical holes formed as the 3 valves split along the sutures but remain fused apically, disc covers surface of valves.Seeds black, 1–2.5 mm long, ovoid to angularly so, dorsal surface shallowly reticulate, hilum ventral/terminal.Cultivated seedlings (measured at node 10): cotyledons Y-shaped (bisected), robust; stems initially triquetrous becoming rounded in cross-section, scabrid; leaves always petiolate, opposite for 2–4 nodes then alternate, lanceolate to narrowly so, 5–8 cm long, 1.5–3 cm wide, dull, green, margin entire to irregular and undulate; stems, petioles, lamina and margin all scabrid with bristle-glands.
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