It is a resident breeding species in southern Thailand, Malaysia, Brunei and the Indonesian islands of Kalimantan, Sumatra and Java.

[2] The jambu fruit dove was formally described in 1789 by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin in his revised and expanded edition of Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae.

[3] Gmelin gave the locality as Java, he based his description on the "pooni-jamboo" that had been first described in 1783 by the Irish orientalist William Marsden in his book The History of Sumatra.

[7] The adult male has a crimson face with a black chin, unmarked dark green upperparts and ivory white underparts, with a pink patch on the breast and a chocolate brown undertail.

The jambu fruit dove is found on the Malay Peninsula through Sumatra (including Riau Archipelago) and the islands of Nias, Bangka and Belitung) to Borneo and perhaps in west Java.

The Temoq people in Pahang, Malaysia believe that the female jambu fruit dove is a form of their creator ancestor Maq Sidi.