According to Plants of the World Online it is native to the Indian subcontinent (India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Bhutan), Indochina, Peninsular Malaysia, Sumatra, the Philippines, and New Guinea, and has been introduced to Nepal, the western Himalayas, Pakistan, southern China including Hainan and Taiwan, eastern Africa, and the Mascarene Islands, Comoro Islands, and Seychelles.

[1] It has been described as rare and endemic to India, though those claims are at least confusing, in the context of statements that the plant is widely used in various forms for many of its medicinal and insecticidal properties,[3] and that it is a quick-growing, evergreen forest shrub considered to be a native of China and distributed in Sri Lanka, India and Malaysia.

[7][8][9] The plant has shown promise as a source of a compound that inhibits an enzyme crucial to the development of HIV.

[3] The rather small flowers grow as 4–12 cm long spikes at the end of branches or in leaf axils.

The arbuscular mycorrhizal fungus plays an important role for the soil fertility and the maintenance of the plant vigor due to its influence on microflora and nutrient cycle.

Overall in the plant, roots, stem and leaves, following phytochemicals were found: alkaloids, flavonoids, tannins and phenols.

[17] The ingredients of the plant may vary depending on the age, physiological stage of the organ parts or the geographic region of cultivation.

[17] J. gendarussa leaf extract was proven to potentially become a male, non-hormonally contraceptive method due to its competitive and reversible inhibition of the spermatozoon hyaluronidase enzyme.

[19] The plant compound Patentiflorin A contained in J. gendarussa has shown to have a positive activity against several HIV strains, higher than the clinically used first anti-HIV drug, zidovudine AZT.