On the border of Namtok Phlio National Park, Chanthaburi Province, Thailand, the tree is found in gallery forest of lower tropical rainforest at Ban Thaew Khlong.

[5] In primary forests of Umphang Wildlife Sanctuary, Tak Province, northwestern Thailand, the species Syzygium cumini, Nephelium hypoleucum, Walsura trichostemon, and Anacolosa ilicoides dominate, with M. plebejum as a minor component.

[7] This community grows from 1000 to 1350m above sea level, and the canopy is dominated by Pinus kesiya and a very diverse group of deciduous and evergreen trees: Hovenia dulcis (up to 40m tall), Acrocarpus fraxinifolius, Pterocymbium dongnaiense, Melia azedarach, Toona hexandra, Erythrina stricta, Balakata baccata, Michelia champaca, Magnolia baillonii, Actinodaphne henryi, Betula alnoides, Artocarpus species, Ficus altissima, Castanopsis calathiformis, Castanopsis diversifolia, Lithocarpus elegans, Lithocarpus fenestratus and Quercus gomeziana.

Five of the communities include this species as a component, see following table:[8] It grows in the tropical mountain cloud forest (1280-1420masl) in the Kog-ma watershed on the slopes of Doi Pui, in Chiang Mai Province, north Thailand.

M. plebejum grows as a shrub in dry dipterocarp forest that has been "enriched" with Pinus kesiya planting, within the Huai Hong Khrai Royal Development Study Center, Doi Saket District, Chiang Mai Province.

[12] The plant is a host in Thailand and Malaysia to the fruit fly Bactrocera osbeckiae and the parasitoid wasps Diachasmimorpha longicaudata and Fopius vandenboschi.

[14] The species was first named in 1875 by the German-born botanist Wilhelm Sulpiz Kurz (1834–78), who was director at the then Buitenzorg Botanical Gardens, now Bogor, from 1859 to 1864, and also worked in Sulawesi, Kolkata, Andaman Islands, Myanmar and Malaysia.