It is a tree with paripinnate leaves, the leaflets elliptic with teeth on the edges, white flowers and capsules containing a seed with a yellow to reddish aril.

Harpullia alata is a tree that typically grows to a height of up to 4 m (13 ft), its new growth covered with rusty hairs.

The fruit is a sessile, broadly oval, yellowish capsule 18–24 mm (0.71–0.94 in) long containing two shiny chestnut brown seeds, nearly enclosed in a yellow to reddish aril.

[3] Harpullia alata was first formally described in 1860 by Victorian government botanist Ferdinand von Mueller from a specimen collected by Dr Hermann Beckler "in woods" near the Clarence River in New South Wales.

Winged tulip grows in rainforest at high altitudes in gullies and steep slopes from the McPherson Ranges in southern Queensland where it is quite common, to the Clarence River in northern New South Wales.