Tree or mallet to 20 m tall. Lignotuber absent. Bark smooth throughout, white to grey to pale pink to pale orange to pale salmon. Branchlets usually glaucous; lacking oil glands in the pith. Juvenile growth (coppice or field seedlings to 50 cm): stems glaucous (rarely non-glaucous), square in cross-section and prominently winged due to decurrent leaf bases; juvenile leaves opposite, sessile, broadly lanceolate to ovate, 3–17 cm long, 2–5 cm wide, dull grey-green to glaucous. Adult leaves alternate, petiole 2–4 cm long; blade lanceolate to broadly lanceolate, 8–17.5 cm long, 1.5–3.4 cm wide, base tapering to petiole, concolorous, dull, blue-green to grey-green to rarely green, side-veins usually at an acute angle to midrib, sometimes wider, densely to very densely reticulate, intramarginal vein parallel to and just within margin, oil glands numerous and mostly intersectional. Inflorescence axillary unbranched, peduncles 1–2.3 cm long, usually pendulous; buds 7 or 9, pedicellate, pedicels 0.4–1.1 cm long. Mature buds ± ovoid to oblong (1.6–2.4 cm long, 0.6–0.8 cm wide), usually glaucous, occasionally hypanthium slightly ribbed longitudinally, scar present, operculum beaked to horn-shaped (1–1.5 cm long, and 2 to 2.5 times length of hypanthium), stamens inflexed to irregularly flexed, anthers versatile, basifixed, globoid, dehiscing by slits, style long, stigma tapered, locules 3 or 4, the placentae each with 4 vertical ovule rows. Flowers pale yellow. Fruit usually pendulous, fruit pedicellate, pedicels 0.4–1.1 cm long, cup-shaped to hemispherical to truncate-globose to urn-shaped, usually glaucous but glaucescence weathering with age, 0.7–1.1 cm long, 0.8–1.2 cm wide, disc descending, valves 3 or 4, valve tips strongly exserted due to fragile style remnants. Seeds brown to grey, 1.5–3 mm long, ovoid or flattened-ovoid, rarely pointed at one end, occasionally with shallow longitudinal furrows on otherwise smooth dorsal surface, hilum ventral. Cultivated seedlings (measured at node 10): cotyledons Y-shaped (bisected); stems square in cross-section and prominently winged due to decurrent leaf bases, slightly glaucous; leaves opposite, sessile, ovate to elliptical, dull grey-green, 2.5–8 cm long, 1.7–4 cm wide, leaf base decurrent on stem.
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