Mallee or shrub up to 4 m tall. Forming a lignotuber.Bark smooth throughout, cream, grey-brown and pale grey.Branchlets lack oil glands in the pith. Juvenile growth (coppice or field seedlings to 50 cm): not seen.Adult leaves alternate, petioles 0.2–0.5 cm long; blade obovate, thick-textured, 3–5.5 cm long, (1.1)1.4–2.1 cm wide, base tapering to petiole, margin entire, apex usually rounded or emarginate (retuse) with a warty apiculum, concolorous, glossy, green, reticulation ? moderate, intramarginal veins prominent and remote from margin, oil glands ? numerous.Inflorescence axillary unbranched, peduncles angular-terete, erect, 4.5–10(14) cm long; buds 13–19 per umbel which is syncarpous, pedicels absent. All the buds in an umbel are joined by the lower fifth to half of the hypanthium only, the upper part of each bud remains free; at maturity the combined length of the fused part plus operculum is ca 4–5 cm. Scar left by the early shedding of the outer (sepaline) operculum is difficult to see; inner (petaline) operculum slightly curved with a few small warts at tip, 5 to 8 times as long as the fused part of the bud (the inner operculum at maturity is ca 4 cm long and is widest at its base being ca 0.5 cm); stamens completely erect, anthers narrowly oblong, versatile, dorsifixed, dehiscing by longitudinal slits, style long and straight, stigma ?blunt, locules 3, the number of vertical rows of ovules not known. Flowers green-yellow.Fruit on erect peduncles, syncarpous, the individual capsules united basally forming a woody mass, the individual capsules cupular or obconic, ca 0.8 cm long and 0.7–1 cm wide, dehiscing by elliptical holes formed as the 3 valves split along the sutures but remain ± connected apically, disc covers the surface of the valves.Seeds not seen.Cultivated seedlings (measured at node 10): not grown by us. From the original description cotyledons Y-shaped (bisected); leaves always petiolate, opposite ca 2-3 nodes then alternate, ovate to orbicular ovate, to 5 cm long, to 4 cm wide, dull pale green, slightly discolorous, lamina scabrous.
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