It is a tree with lance-shaped to elliptic leaves, creamy green, perfumed flowers, and flattened spherical to pear-shaped, red to orange drupes.

Cryptocarya oblata is a tree that typically grows to a height of up to 35 m (115 ft), its stems usually buttressed.

Flowering occurs from November to February, and the fruit is a laterally compressed to red to orange drupe, 32–47 mm (1.3–1.9 in) long and 25–38 mm (0.98–1.50 in) wide with white or cream-coloured cotyledons.

[2][3] Cryptocarya oblata was first formally described in 1894 by Frederick Manson Bailey in the Botany Bulletin of the Department of Agriculture Queensland, from specimens collected at the Daintree River.

[4] This species of Cryptocarya grows rainforest from sea level to an altitude of up to 1,150 m (3,770 ft), between Cooktown and Koombooloomba in central eastern Queensland.