[4] The species was first formally described as Eucalyptus polycarpa by the botanist Ferdinand von Mueller in 1859 in the Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society, Botany.

[7][8] It was reclassified into the genus Corymbia in 1995 by Ken Hill and Lawrence Alexander Sidney Johnson in the journal Telopea.

[5][9] Corymbia polycarpa is found in Western Australia, the Northern Territory, Queensland and northwestern New South Wales.

It is found near watercourses, in depressions or on floodplains growing in sandy or silty alluvium and less commonly in cracking clays and in skeletal sandstone or lateritic soils.

Indigenous Australians used the gum medicinally[10] as an antiseptic liquid to treat cuts, sores, burns, ulcers and yaws.