Mallee or tree to 5 m tall. Forming a lignotuber. Bark smooth throughout, grey to whitish over brown-grey, shedding in short strips. Branchlets lacking oil glands in the pith. Juvenile growth (coppice or field seedlings to 50 cm): stems rounded in cross-section; juvenile leaves held erect, very shortly petiolate, alternate, linear, 2.5–6.5 cm long, 0.2–0.6 cm wide, margins subcrenulate, grey-green (not glaucous), dull. Adult leaves alternate, petioles 0.2–1.2 cm long; blade linear to narrowly lanceolate or falcate, 3.5–8.5 cm long, 0.3–1 cm wide, base tapering to petiole, margin distantly crenulate to entire, apex finely pointed, concolorous, green, dull but maturing very glossy, side-veins greater than 45° to midrib, reticulation dense, intramarginal vein present, oil glands intersectional. Inflorescence axillary unbranched, peduncles angular, 0.4–1 cm long, buds 7 or 9, pedicellate, pedicels 0.2–0.3 cm long. Mature buds ovoid to fusiform (0.5–0.8 cm long, 0.25–0.35 cm wide), scar present, operculum usually beaked (0.3–0.5 cm long), stamens inflexed (rarely a few irregularly flexed), anthers cuneate-cuboid, adnate to filament apex (rigidly basifixed), dehiscing by sub-terminal pores, a few of the innermost stamens imperfectly formed, style long and straight, stigma blunt to tapered, locules 3(4), the placentae each with 4 vertical rows of ovules. Flowers creamy white. Fruit pedicellate, pedicels 0.1–0.3 cm long, shortly barrel-shaped to cupular, 0.3–0.5 cm long, 0.3–0.6 cm wide, disc sometimes level, usually descending, valves 3(4), held near rim level. Seeds brown to grey-brown, 1–2 mm long, flattened-ovoid, dorsal surface usually with longitudinal furrows but otherwise smooth, hilum ventral. Cultivated seedlings (measured at node 10): cotyledons Y-shaped (bisected); stems rounded in cross-section, very warty; leaves always sessile, opposite for 6–16 nodes then becoming alternate, linear to narrowly oblong-elliptic, 1.5–4 cm long, 0.2–1 cm wide, margin minutely denticulate due to warts, discolorous, grey-green (not glaucous).
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