Trees to 10 m tall. Forming a lignotuber. Bark rough on base of trunk, rarely more, black and flaky, smooth above red-brown over grey to cream or orange. Branchlets slightly to conspicuously glaucous, pith with oil glands. Juvenile growth (coppice or field seedlings to 50 cm):not seen, but presumably glaucous with scabrid-warty stems and scarbrid ovate leaves. Adult leaves alternate, petioles 1–2 cm long; blade lanceolate, 6–11 cm long, 0.7–1.5(2) cm wide, base tapering to petiole, margin entire, apex pointed, concolorous, dull, blue-green, side-veins greater than 45° to midrib, reticulation moderate to dense, intramarginal vein present, oil glands island and intersectional. Inflorescence axillary unbranched, peduncles widening apically, 1–1.5 cm long, buds ?9, pedicellate (pedicels 0.1–0.2 cm long). Mature buds fusiform (0.9–1.2 cm long, 0.2–0.3 cm wide), non-glaucous though the peduncles and pedicels may be waxy, scar present, operculum conical to horn-shaped, about twice the length of the hypanthium and equal to it at the join, few (one or several) outer stamens erect, most stamens variably deflexed, anthers oblong, versatile, dorsifixed, dehiscing by longitudinal slits, style long and straight, stigma blunt to tapered, locules 3, the placentae each with 4 vertical rows of ovules. Flowers white. Fruit pedicellate (pedicels 0.1–0.2 cm long), cylindrical to barrel-shaped, 0.4–0.9 cm long, 0.1–0.3–0.5 cm wide, non-glaucous, disc descending vertically, valves 3, near rim level. Seeds pale to mid-brown, 0.8–1.3 mm long, sub-spherical, surface smooth, hilum ventral/terminal. Cultivated seedlings (measured at ca node 10): cotyledons Y-shaped (bisected); stems rounded in cross-section, very scabrid, glaucous; leaves always petiolate, opposite for 4–6 nodes then alternate, ovate to lanceolate, 6–9 cm long, 1.5–3 cm wide, slightly glaucous, petioles, leaf margins and both faces of the lamina with conspicuous hairs such that they feel scabrid. The hairs have a multicellular base surmounted by a pair of long cells that are basally appressed, and apically divergent.
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