It is a tree with oblong to elliptic leaves, cream coloured, perfumed flowers, and usually spherical, ribbed, red drupes.

Cryptocarya pleurosperma is a tree that typically grows to a height of up to 30 m (98 ft), its stems sometimes buttressed.

The flowers cream-coloured and perfumed, arranged in panicles or reduced to a raceme in leaf axils shorter than the leaves.

[4][5] Poison walnut grows in rainforest at altitudes from sea level to 700 m (2,300 ft) from near the Bloomfield River to near Palmerston in north-east Queensland.

[2][3] This species of Cryptocarya is listed as "of least concern" under the Queensland Government Nature Conservation Act 1992.