Mallee to 4 m tall. Forming a lignotuber. Bark smooth throughout, pale grey and tan, shedding in thin curly flakes. Branchlets lacking oil glands in the pith. Juvenile growth (coppice or field seedlings to 50 cm): stems rounded in cross-section, smooth or slightly warty; juvenile leaves sessile to sub-sessile, opposite at lowest nodes only, soon alternate, oblong-linear, 1–3.5 cm long, 0.1–0.3 cm wide, dull, grey-green to green. Adult leaves alternate, petiole 0.2–1 cm long; blade linear, (3.3)4–8 cm long, 0.2–0.5 cm wide, base tapering to petiole, margin entire, apex finely pointed, concolorous, green, glossy, venation generally obscure except midrib, any side-veins visible are about perpendicular to midrib, intersectional oil glands irregularly-shaped and occur on visible fragments of reticulation, intramarginal vein present or obscure. Inflorescence axillary unbranched, peduncles angular to slightly flattened, 0.2–1 cm long, buds 7 or 9, pedicellate, pedicels 0.1–0.4 cm long. Mature buds ovoid to almost fusiform (0.5–0.9 cm long, 0.2–0.3 cm wide), scar present, operculum conical or slightly beaked (0.25–0.4 cm long), hypanthium sometimes with ribs continuing from the angled pedicel, stamens inflexed, anthers cuneate-cuboid to globoid, adnate to filament apex (rigidly basifixed), dehiscing by sub-terminal pores, a few of the innermost stamens imperfectly formed, style long and straight, stigma tapered or blunt, locules 3(4), the placentae each with 4 vertical rows of ovules. Flowers creamy white. Fruit pedicellate, pedicels 0.1–0.3 cm long, very shortly barrel-shaped to truncate globose, 0.4–0.6 cm long, 0.4–0.5(0.6) cm wide, disc pale, usually descending, valves 3(4), held about rim level. Seeds brown, 0.8–1.5 mm long, flattened-ovoid, dorsal surface furrowed or not, scarcely reticulate, hilum ventral. Cultivated seedlings (measured at node 10): cotyledons Y-shaped (bisected); stems rounded in cross-section, warty or smooth; leaves sessile, opposite for 11–22 nodes then alternate, linear-oblong becoming linear further up stem, 1.5–6.5 cm long, 0.1–0.5(0.7) cm wide, green to grey-green, scarcely discolorous to concolorous, dull.
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