Mallet to 16 m tall. Lignotuber absent. Bark smooth throughout, grey to white to orange-brown or coppery, often highly glossy with a silvery appearance. Branchlets lacking oil glands in the pith. Juvenile growth (coppice or field seedlings to 50 cm): stems square in cross-section and prominently winged due to decurrent leaf bases, becoming rounded further up the stem, stems sometimes glaucous; leaves opposite, sessile, ovate to elliptical, with leaf base decurrent on stem, dull grey-green to blue-green to slightly glaucous, becoming alternate, shortly petiolate, lanceolate with tapering bases, glossy green; 2–9.5 cm long, 1.3–4 cm wide. Adult leaves alternate, petiole 1.2–2.2 cm long; blade narrowly lanceolate to lanceolate, sometimes falcate, 6–14 cm long, 0.8–2.2 cm wide, base tapering to petiole, concolorous, very glossy, dark green, side-veins at an acute or wider angle to midrib, densely to very densely reticulate, intramarginal vein parallel to and just within margin, oil glands numerous and mostly intersectional. Inflorescence axillary unbranched, peduncles (0.7)1–1.7 cm long, pendulous; buds 7 to 13, pedicellate, pedicels (0.3)0.5–1.1 cm long. Mature buds 1.5–2.4 cm long, 0.4–0.9 cm wide, hypanthium urceolate and ribbed, scar present, operculum beaked to horn-shaped (0.9–1.6 cm long), wider than the hypanthium at the join, stamens inflexed, anthers versatile, basifixed, globoid, dehiscing by slits, style long, stigma tapered, locules 3 or 4, the placentae each with 4 vertical ovule rows. Flowers creamy-yellow to white. Fruit pendulous, fruit pedicellate, pedicels 0.3–1.2 cm long, urn-shaped, hypanthium sometimes ribbed, 0.7–1.2 cm long, 0.5–1(1.1) cm wide, disc descending, valves 3 or 4, valve tips strongly exserted due to fragile style remnants. Seeds glossy brown to grey, 1.5–2 mm long, ovoid or flattened-ovoid, rarely pointed at one end, occasionally with shallow longitudinal furrows on otherwise smooth dorsal surface, hilum ventral. Cultivated seedlings (measured at node 10): cotyledons Y-shaped (bisected); stems square in cross-section and prominently winged due to decurrent leaf bases; leaves opposite, sessile, linear for the first few nodes then ovate to elliptical, dull, blue-green to grey-green, 1.2–3 cm long, 0.5–2.5 cm wide, leaf base decurrent on stem.
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