It is a medium-sized to large tree with elliptic to egg-shaped leaves, cream coloured, perfumed, tube-shaped flowers, and spherical black drupes.

Cryptocarya foveolata is a medium-sized to large tree, typically growing to 40 m (130 ft) high with a trunk dbh of 120 cm (47 in), the stem sometimes butressed.

[2][3][4] The flowers are cream-coloured, perfumed, and arranged in panicles or racemes in leaf axils and are shorter than the leaves.

[2][3][4] Cryptocarya foveolata was first formally described in 1924 by Cyril Tenison White and William Douglas Francis in Proceedings of the Royal Society of Queensland.

[7] Cryptocarya foveolata grows in rainforests on fertile soils, mostly 600 m (2,000 ft) or higher above sea level, and is often seen in association with the Antarctic beech.