Tree to 10 m tall. Forming a lignotuber.Bark rough to 4 cm diameter branches, firm to corky fibrous, hardly furrowed, grey or black.Juvenile growth (coppice or field seedlings to 50 cm): stem square in cross-section and slightly winged, smooth or warty; juvenile leaves opposite for 10–20 nodes then alternate (but occasionally reverting to opposite for a few nodes), sessile or shortly petiolate, lanceolate, 4.5–9 cm long, 1–2.5 cm wide, base rounded or tapering to short petiole, margin entire or scarcely crenulate, slightly discolorous, green, glossy.Adult leaves alternate, petiole 1–3 cm long; blade lanceolate to falcate, 10–25 cm long, 1.5–2.5 cm wide, base tapering to petiole or sometimes rounded, concolorous, glossy, green, side-veins at an acute or wider angle to midrib, densely reticulate, intramarginal vein parallel to and remote from margin, oil glands mostly island.Inflorescence axillary unbranched, peduncles 0.4–0.6 cm long, buds 7 per umbel, pedicels 0.1–0.4 cm long. Mature buds ovoid to fusiform, ca 0.5 cm long, ca 0.2–0.3 cm wide, green, scar present, operculum conical or slightly beaked, stamens all inflexed or a few irregularly flexed, all fertile, anthers cuboid, versatile, sub-basifixed, dehiscing by longitudinal slits (non-confluent), style long, stigma blunt or more or less pinhead, locules 3 or 4 (rarely 5), the placentae each with 4 vertical ovule rows. Flowers white.Fruit on pedicels to 0.3 cm long, rarely sessile, hemispherical or cupular, 0.5–0.6 cm long, 0.5–0.8 cm wide, disc raised-convex to oblique, valves 3 or 4 (rarely 5), exserted.Seeds dark brown to reddish brown, 1.5–3 mm long, ovoid or flattened-ovoid, often pointed at one end, usually lacunose, dorsal surface pitted, hilum ventral. Cultivated seedlings (measured at ca node 10): cotyledons bilobed to oblong; stems square in cross-section, warty or smooth; leaves sessile and opposite for at least 14-24 nodes, lanceolate, 5.5–8.8 cm long, 1.2–1.8 cm wide, base rounded to tapering, never stem-clasping, slightly glossy, green.
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