Mallet to 6 m tall, lacking a lignotuber. Bark smooth throughout or with persistent rough grey to brown ribbons on base of trunk extending for ca 1 m; smooth bark grey-brown or pale grey, sometimes with a few ribbons on the upper branches.Branchlets with oil glands in the pith, or lacking them. Juvenile growth (coppice or field seedlings to 50 cm): stems usually rounded in cross-section; juvenile leaves alternate, petiolate, elliptic to ovate, 4–10 cm long, 2–5 cm wide, dull, blue-green, becoming green, glossy at upper nodes. Adult leaves alternate, petiole 0.8–2 cm long; blade lanceolate to narrowly so, 5.5–13 cm long, 0.6–2 cm wide, base tapering to petiole, entire (marginal lenticels sometimes present but margin not conspicuously toothed), concolorous, glossy, green, side-veins at an acute or wider angle to midrib, densely to very densely reticulate, intramarginal vein parallel to and remote from margin, oil glands intersectional. Inflorescence axillary unbranched, peduncle slender but apically flattened, pendulous, 1.5–3 cm long; buds 7 per umbel (rarely 3), pedicellate, pedicels 0.5–1 cm long. Mature buds ± cylindrical (1.5–2.5 cm long, 0.5–0.6 cm wide), green to yellow or red-brown, usually with longitudinal ribs, scar present (outer operculum shed early in bud development), inner operculum strongly beaked (0.8–1.6 cm long), stamens inflexed, anthers more or less cuboid, versatile, dorsifixed, dehiscing by longitudinal slits, style long, stigma tapered, locules 3 or 4, the placentae each with 6 vertical ovule rows. Flowers pale yellow. Fruit pedicellate, pedicels 0.4–0.9 cm long, cylindrical to barrel-shaped, 1–1.5 cm long, 0.8–1.4 cm wide, usually ribbed longitudinally, disc descending vertically, valves 3 or 4, enclosed or just below rim level. Seed dark grey-brown to blackish, 2–4 mm long, flattened-pyramidal with marginal flange and ribs ascending to hilum which is ventral or almost terminal. Cultivated seedlings (measured at ca node 10): cotyledons reniform; stems rounded in cross-section; leaves always petiolate, opposite for 3 or 4 nodes then becoming alternate, ovate, 4–6 cm long, 2–3.5 cm wide, dull grey-green.
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