It is a free-living, solitary coral and is native to the tropical and subtropical Indo-Pacific region where it is found on soft sediment in shallow water.

This coral was first described by the French naturalist Jean-Louis Hardouin Michelin de Choisy in 1842 who named it Fungia distorta.

The corallite (the stony cup in which the polyp sits) has numerous beaded septa (partitions) of varying heights.

Its range extends from the east coast of Africa and Madagascar to Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Indonesia, northern and eastern Australia and the Galapagos Islands.

The coral may be fragmented due to physical forces, such as storms, but it is also capable of autotomy, causing itself to break apart through selective weakening of certain parts of the skeleton.