Mallee up to 4 m tall. Forming a lignotuber.Bark smooth throughout, cream, grey to grey-brown and orange-brown, shedding in ribbons.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 linear, 5-7.5 cm long, 0.4-0.7(0.9) cm wide, base tapering to petiole, margin entire but with marginal black lenticels, apex usually rounded or pointed and apiculate/warty, concolorous, glossy, green, reticulation ? moderate, intramarginal veins prominent and remote from margin such that the blade appears to have 3 main parallel veins, oil glands obscure or scattered.Inflorescence axillary unbranched, peduncles terete, down-curved by time of flowering, 4.5-10(14) cm long; buds 11-25(30) per umbel which is syncarpous, pedicels absent. All the buds in an umbel are completely joined by the hypanthium (base) only, the upper part of each bud remains free; at maturity the combined length of the fused part plus operculum is ca 6-11 cm. Scar left by the early shedding of the outer (sepaline) operculum is often difficult to see; inner (petaline) operculum always curved to sinuous, 5 to 10 times as long as the fused part of the bud (the inner operculum at maturity is 5-9.5 cm long and is widest at its base being 0.7–1.1 cm); stamens completely erect, anthers narrowly oblong, versatile, dorsifixed, dehiscing by longitudinal slits, style long and straight, stigma blunt to broadly conical, locules 3, the placentae each with ?4 vertical rows of ovules. Flowers green-yellow.Fruit on rigidly down-turned peduncles, syncarpous, the individual capsules in the woody mass 1.2-1.4 cm wide, length not measurable, dehiscing by elliptical holes formed as the 3 valves split along the sutures but remain ± connected apically, disc covers the surface of the valves and appears striate.Seeds blackish, 1.5–2.5 mm long, ovoid to more or less angularly so, dorsal surface scarcely reticulate, hilum ventral/terminal.Cultivated seedlings (measured at node 10): cotyledons Y-shaped (bisected); stems triangular but soon becoming rounded in cross-section, scabrid throughout; leaves always petiolate, opposite ca 4-5 nodes then alternate, ovate-deltoid to ovate, 3–5 cm long, 2–3.5 cm wide, dull grey-green to green, lamina scabrid becoming sparsely so.
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