Tree to 30 m tall. Forming a lignotuber. Bark smooth throughout or with some slabs of fibrous grey to brown bark persistent at base of trunk; smooth bark mottled cream, yellow, pale brown, pinkish and green, often with ribbons of decorticated bark in the upper branches, branchlets non-glaucous. Juvenile growth (coppice or field seedlings to 50 cm): stem square or rounded in cross-section, not glaucous, warty; juvenile leaves always petiolate, opposite for few nodes then alternate, ovate, 4–8 cm long, 1.5–4.7 cm wide, margin entire or crenulate, green; new growth tips glaucous. Adult leaves alternate, petiole 1.2–3.1 cm long; blade lanceolate to ovate or falcate, 7.5–21.5 cm long, 1.4–3.3 cm wide, conspicuously undulate, base tapering to petiole, concolorous, glossy, dark green, side-veins greater than 45° to midrib, moderately to densely reticulate, intramarginal vein parallel to and well removed from margin, oil glands island and intersectional; new growth tips in mature crown strikingly glaucous. Inflorescence axillary unbranched, peduncles 0.5–1.4 cm long, buds 7, pedicellate, pedicels 0.3–0.5 cm long. Mature buds ovoid to diamond-shaped (0.5–0.7 cm long, 0.3–0.4 cm wide), green to yellow, scar present, operculum beaked (0.3–0.4 cm long), stamens inflexed or irregularly flexed, anthers cuboid or cuneate, versatile, dorsifixed, dehiscing by longitudinal slits (non-confluent), style long, stigma blunt, locules 3 or 4, the placentae each with 4 vertical ovule rows. Flowers white. Fruit pedicellate, pedicels 0.2–0.5 cm long, obconical, 0.3–0.5 cm long, 0.5–0.7 cm wide, disc raised-annular to convex, or level, valves 3 or 4, near rim level to slightly enclosed. Seeds black or brown, 1–2.5 mm long, ovoid or flattened-ovoid, often pointed at one end, slightly lacunose, dorsal surface slightly pitted or smooth, hilum ventral. Cultivated seedlings (measured at ca node 10): cotyledons bilobed; stems usually square in cross-section, slightly warty; leaves always petiolate, opposite for 5 to 8 nodes then alternate, ovate-elliptic, 4–5 cm long, 2–3 cm wide, base rounded to truncate, margin entire or subcrenulate, apex pointed or rounded, only slightly discolorous, mid-green above, paler below.