Tree to 45 m tall with rough, compact bark over most of trunk, very ribbony above, then smooth, white or creamy-white; or a smooth-barked mallee. Juvenile leaves sessile with more or less stem-clasping bases, opposite for many pairs, lanceolate, to 7 cm long, 1.3 cm wide, green, growing tips more or less glaucous; adult leaves petiolate, alternate, lanceolate to falcate, 10–20 cm long, 0.7–1.5 cm wide, concolorous, dull, green; reticulation dense, with numerous, large, island oil glands. Inflorescences axillary, unbranched; peduncles to 1.2 cm long, 7-flowered; buds pedicellate, diamond-shaped to ovoid, to 0.7 cm long, 0.4 cm diam., scar present; operculum conical or beaked; stamens inflexed; anthers dorsifixed, cuneate; ovules in 4 vertical rows; flowers white. Fruit pedicellate, hemispherical, to 0.7 cm long, 0.7 cm diam.; disc steeply ascending; valves 3, exserted; seed brown-black, flattened-ellipsoid, shallowly reticulate, hilum ventral. Flowers Dec.–Jan.
DunT, EGL, EGU, HSF, HNF, MonT, HFE, VAlp. Also NSW. In Victoria occurring as a rough-barked tree in well-watered valleys, e.g. south of the Howe Range, as a slender tree with a little rough bark, e.g. in the Angora Range, and as a smooth-barked mallee in mountain situations, e.g. Little River Gorge, Mt Dawson, Black Range east of Mt Useful.
