Tree up to 35 m tall. The bark is rough over whole trunk and branches, thick, hard, grooved, black (ironbark).
Juvenile leaves petiolate (have a stalk), are opposite for a few pairs then alternate, narrowly to broadly tapering to a point, to 17 cm long and 4 cm wide, more or less discolorous, green or greyish-green or glaucous (covered with a a greyish, bluish, or whitish powder or waxy coating).
Adult leaves petiolate, alternate, lance-head shaped, 9.5 – 22 cm long and 1 – 2 cm wide, concolorous (the lower leaf surface distinctly different in colour from the upper), green or glaucous; reticulation dense with numerous intersectional oil glands.
It blooms producing inflorescences with flowers that are white, rarely pink. Keep an eye out for the flower caps that cover developing flowers and may fall on the ground at the end of flowering.
Fruits are truncate (end abruptly as it cut off across the tip), spherical and 1.4 cm long and 1.4 cm diameter. The seed is brown, irregularly egg-shaped and slightly flattened.
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First fully open single flower
Full flowering (record all days)
End of flowering (when 95% of the flowers have faded)
No flowering
Ironbark and E. sideroxylon differ from all other ironbarks by the retention of the outer operculum until flowering.
