Tree or mallee to 8 m tall. Forming a lignotuber.Bark usually smooth throughout, often powdery, mottled grey, brown, coppery, pink, orange and white.Branchlets may be glaucous or not. Juvenile growth (coppice or field seedlings to 50 cm): stems square in cross-section, usually glaucous; juvenile leaves always petiolate, opposite for 5 or 6 nodes then alternate, ovate, 5–9 cm long, 2.5–4.8 cm wide, base tapering to petiole or almost truncate, green to blue-green or slightly glaucous.Adult leaves alternate, petiole 1–3.5 cm long; blade lanceolate to falcate, 5.5–16 cm long, 0.7–2.7 cm wide, base tapering to petiole, concolorous, glossy or dull, green, side-veins greater than 45° to midrib, moderately reticulate, intramarginal vein parallel to and well removed from margin, oil glands mostly island.Inflorescence axillary unbranched, peduncles 0.3–0.8 cm long, buds 7, sessile or pedicellate (pedicels 0–0.2 cm long). Mature buds ovoid to diamond-shaped (0.6–1 cm long, 0.3–0.6 cm wide), green to creamy or glaucous, scar present, operculum conical to rounded (0.4–0.7 cm long), outer stamens erect, the inner inflexed or irregularly flexed, anthers cuboid or cuneate, versatile, dorsifixed, dehiscing by longitudinal slits (non-confluent), style long, stigma tapered, locules 3 or 4, the placentae each with 6 vertical ovule rows. Flowers white.Fruit sessile or pedicellate (pedicels 0–0.3 cm long), cup-shaped or hemispherical, 0.4–0.6 cm long, 0.4–0.8 cm wide, disc slightly raised, level or slightly descending, valves 3 or 4, strongly exserted or near rim level.Seeds dark brown or black, 0.7–1.2 mm long, pyramidal or cuboid, dorsal surface usually pitted, hilum terminal. Cultivated seedlings (measured at ca node 10): cotyledons reniform to oblong; stems square in cross-section; leaves petiolate, opposite for 5 or 6 nodes then becoming alternate, ovate, 5–10 cm long, 2.5–5 cm wide, base truncate to tapering, apex pointed to rounded, dull, glaucous weathering to green.
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