Corymbia porrecta is a tree that grows to a height of 20 m (66 ft) but often much less, and forms a lignotuber.

[2][3][4][5][6] This bloodwood was first formally described in 1953 by Stanley Thatcher Blake who gave it the name Eucalyptus porrecta and published the description in the Australian Journal of Botany.

[7] In 1995 Ken Hill and Lawrence Alexander Sidney Johnson changed the name to Corymbia porrecta.

[5][8] The specific epithet is from the Latin porrectus meaning "stretched outwards and forward", possibly referring to the long broad leaves of the crown.

[4] The grey bloodwood usually grows in tall woodland on sandy, gravelly soils in the north-west of the Northern Territory, between Litchfield and Darwin, east to Jabiru, the Coburg Peninsula and on Bathurst and Melville Islands.