About 34 species are recognised in the genus, distributed from India and southern China, through southeast Asia to New Guinea, Solomon Islands, and Australia.

[3][4] The genus ranges from the Indian subcontinent to Indochina, southern China, Malesia, New Guinea and the Solomon and Santa Cruz Islands, and northern and eastern Australia.

[11][4] In the Indian subcontinent, including India, Bhutan, Nepal, and Sri Lanka, large trees of the genus Dysoxylum grow naturally in forests from lowlands to mid-elevation mountains.

[12] In the forests of the region of China, India, Sri Lanka and the adjacent Himalayas including Bhutan and Nepal, about fourteen recorded different species grow naturally from the lowlands to the mountains up to 1,700 m (5,600 ft) elevation.

(Meliaceae) and then from D. binectariferum (aka D. gotadhora) Rohitukine exhibits both anti-inflammatory as well as immuno-modulatory properties besides acting as an anticancer compound.

[16] The genus Dysoxylum was erected in 1825 by the German-Dutch botanist Carl Ludwig Blume to accommodate some newly discovered plant species from Java.

A 2021 revision of the genus (which by then had come to include 94 species) confirmed the polyphyly and the authors reinstated several genera which had previously been considered synonyms of Dysoxylum – Didymocheton, Epicharis, Goniocheton, Prasoxylon, and Pseudocarapa – in order to accommodate their findings.