Tree to about 20 m tall. Forming a lignotuber.Bark rough throughout, grey or grey-brown to yellowish grey or orange-brown-grey, fibrous, sometimes prickly to touch, held on trunk in flattish strips rather than like typical stringybark.Juvenile growth (coppice or field seedlings to 50 cm): stem rounded in cross-section; juvenile leaves opposite and sessile for some pairs then shortly petiolate, ovate to lanceolate, 6–13 cm long, 1–5.3 cm wide, discolorous, green above, paler green below.Adult leaves alternate, petiole 0.8–2.3 cm long; blade lanceolate to falcate, 6–17 cm long, 1–2.5 cm wide, base oblique or tapering evenly to petiole, margin entire, concolorous or only slightly discolorous, semi-glossy to very glossy, green, side-veins at ca 45° to midrib, densely reticulate, intramarginal vein obvious, oil glands island and intersectional.Inflorescence axillary unbranched but often clustered towards the ends of branches and may appear to be terminal and branched, peduncles 0.6–2 cm long, buds 9 or 11 (?or more) per umbel, pedicels 0.2–0.7 cm long. Mature buds ovoid to obovoid, 0.7–0.8 cm long, 0.3–0.4 cm wide, green to yellow, scar absent, the single operculum shedding at flowering, operculum beaked, stamens irregularly flexed, anthers reniform to cordate, versatile, dorsifixed, dehiscing by confluent slits, style long and straight or a bit corkscrewed, locules 3 or 4, the placentae each with 2 vertical ovule rows. Flowers creamy white.Fruit on pedicel 0.2–0.5 cm long, truncate-globose to hemispherical or cupular, 0.5–0.8 cm long, 0.5–1 cm wide, disc ± level or descending obliquely to vertically or concealed, valves 3 or 4, usually near rim level.Seeds brown, 1.5–2.5 mm long, pyramidal or obliquely pyramidal, dorsal surface smooth, hilum terminal. Cultivated seedlings (measured at ca node 10): cotyledons reniform; stems rounded in cross-section; leaves opposite and sessile for at least 10 nodes, ovate to lanceolate, 10–14.5 cm long, 2–4.5 cm wide, base rounded, discolorous, green.
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