Mallee to 5 m tall, rarely a tree to 12 m. Bark of mallees smooth throughout, grey to pale grey over green-pink; trees have a stocking of scaly or flaky rough grey bark for up to 3 m of trunk. Branchlets lacking oil glands in the pith.Juvenile growth (coppice or field seedlings to 50 cm): stems rounded in cross-section; juvenile leaves always petiolate, alternate, linear, 3–7 cm long, 0.2–0.6 cm wide, grey-green. Adult leaves alternate, petioles 0.5–1.6 cm long; blade narrowly lanceolate, 5.5–10.5 cm long, 0.5–1.5 cm wide, base tapering to petiole, margin entire, apex pointed, concolorous, glossy, dark green, side veins acute, reticulation usually moderate to dense, intramarginal vein remote from margin, oil glands intersectional, highly irregular in outline. Inflorescence axillary, unbranched, peduncles 0.4–1.3 cm long, buds 7, pedicellate, pedicels 0.2–0.5 cm long. Mature buds obovoid to pyriform in shape with the hypanthium 4-angled i.e. square in cross-section (0.5–0.7 cm long, 0.3–0.6 cm wide), green to yellow, scar present (outer operculum shed early), operculum hemispherical and usually apiculate (0.15–0.2 cm long), stamens inflexed, the outer stamens longer and without anthers (staminodes), inner stamens short, fertile, anthers oblong-reniform (broader than long) to almost spherical, weakly versatile, sub-basifixed, dehiscing by sub-terminal short slits, style long, tapering near the base, stigma more or less rounded, locules usually (3)4(5), the placentae each with 4 vertical ovule rows. Flowers white. Fruit pedicellate, pedicels 0.2–0.3 cm long, cupular-obconical in outline and square in cross-section (4-angled) in the basal half, 0.6–0.9 cm long, 0.4–0.7 cm wide, disc descending, valves usually (3)4(5), enclosed. Seeds tan, 0.8–2 mm long, flattened-ovoid, dorsal surface smooth, hilum ventral.Cultivated seedlings (measured at node 10): cotyledons Y-shaped (bisected); stems rounded to square in cross-section; leaves always subsessile to shortly petiolate, opposite for 5 to 8 nodes then alternate, linear to very narrowly elliptic-oblong, 1.7–3.5 cm long, 0.2–0.5 cm wide, dull, grey-green.
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