Its leaves are lance-shaped to elliptic, sometimes with toothed edges, the flowers perfumed and white to cream, and the fruit is an achene.

Atherosperma moschatum is a shrub to conical tree that typically grows to a height of 2 to 30 metres (7 to 100 feet).

[2][3][4] Atherosperma moschatum was first formally described in 1806 by French naturalist Jacques Labillardière in his Novae Hollandiae Plantarum Specimen.

[8] In 1855, Edmond Tulasne described Atherosperma integrifolium in the Archives du Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris from an unpublished description by Allan Cunningham.

[9][10] In 2007, Richard Schodde reduced this species to a subspecies of Atherosperma moschatum in the Flora of Australia, and its name, and that of the autonym are accepted by the Australian Plant Census and Plants of the World Online: Black sassafras grows along streams in deep gullies at higher altitudes and occurs at Barrington Tops, in the upper Blue Mountains and Tia Gorge in New South Wales,[3][17] in cool-temperate rainforest in eastern Victoria and eastern Tasmania.

These pockets of rainforest are thought to be critical refuges for populations of lichen species among fire-prone eucalyptus woodland.