Mallet to 15 m tall. Lignotuber absent.Bark smooth throughout, mottled silvery grey and pale salmon-pink. Branchlets lacking oil glands in the pith. Juvenile growth (coppice or field seedlings to 50 cm): not seen. Adult leaves alternate, petioles 1–2.4 cm long; blade lanceolate or sometimes falcate, 7–14.5 cm long, 1–2.3 cm wide, base tapering to petiole, margin entire, apex acute, concolorous, glossy, dark green, side-veins acute, reticulation dense to very dense, intramarginal vein very close to margin, oil glands few, intersectional, irregular. Inflorescence axillary unbranched, pendulous, peduncles 1.5–2.5 cm long, buds 9 or 11, pedicellate (pedicels 0.8–1.3 cm long). Mature buds elongated-ovoid with hypanthium smooth, 1.5–2.5 cm long, 0.6–0.9 cm wide, scar present, operculum narrowly conical, stamens all inflexed or mostly inflexed with a few irregularly flexed, anthers cuboid, versatile, dorsifixed, dehiscing by longitudinal slits, style long and straight, stigma blunt to rounded, locules 3(4), the placentae each with 4 vertical rows of ovules. Flowers creamy white to pale yellow. Fruit down-turned, pedicellate (pedicels 0.9–1.3 cm long), flattened-globose or less commonly hemispherical, 0.6–0.9 cm long, 1–1.4 cm wide, smooth (un-ribbed), disc descending vertically, valves 3(4), prominently exserted and fragile. Seeds brown to grey-brown, 1–3 mm long, ovoid or flattened-ovoid, dorsal surface very shallowly reticulate and often with two longitudinal furrows, hilum ventral.Cultivated seedling: cotyledons Y-shaped (bisected); stems rounded or square in cross-section; leaves subsessile and linear for ca 3 nodes then petiolate, narrowly elliptical until ca node ca 10 then becoming broadly elliptical to ovate, becoming sub-opposite to alternate after node 12, 1.7–3 cm long, 0.7–2.5 cm wide, green, dull.
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