Mallee to 6 m tall. Forming a lignotuber. Bark smooth throughout, grey or grey-brown over creamy-brown to pale coppery to pale orange, decorticating in ribbons which occasionally hang in the upper branches. Juvenile growth (coppice or field seedlings to 50 cm): not seen. Adult leaves alternate, petiole 1.5–2.5 cm long; blade lanceolate, (6)7–13(14) cm long, 1–2.3 cm wide, base tapering to petiole, concolorous, glossy, green to dark green, side-veins at an acute or wider angle to midrib, densely reticulate, intramarginal vein parallel to and just within margin, oil glands numerous and mostly intersectional. Inflorescence axillary unbranched, peduncles 0.5–1.3 cm long, usually pendulous; buds 7, 9 or 11, pedicellate, pedicels 0.4–0.7 cm long. Mature buds 1.2–1.7 cm long, 0.4–0.6 cm wide, with hypanthium urceolate, sometimes ribbed, scar present, operculum beaked to horn-shaped (0.7–1.1 cm long, stamens inflexed, 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 to white. Fruit pedicellate, pedicels 0.3–0.7 cm long, often pendulous, urn-shaped, 0.9–1.1 cm long, 0.6–0.9 cm wide, disc descending, valves 3 or 4, valve tips strongly exserted due to fragile style remnants. Seeds glossy brown to grey, 1.2–2 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; leaves opposite, sessile, linear for the first few nodes then ovate to elliptical, dull green to grey-green, 2.2–5 cm long, 1.3–2.5 cm wide, leaf base decurrent on stem.
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