It ranges from Nepal, eastern India, and Bangladesh through parts of Indochina (Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam) and Malesia (Peninsular Malaysia, Sumatra, Borneo, Sulawesi, and the Philippines).

David J. de Laubenfels identified the eastern populations from New Guinea to Fiji as a separate species, Podocarpus idenburgensis, distinguished by narrow, acute leaves.

[4] It grows 10–15m tall, though very occasionally taller, in tropical and subtropical wet closed forests, between 650m and 1600m elevation.

It can grow in a variety of places like rocky hill-tops, swampy forest, kerangas, on limestone and sandstone soils.

[3]: 401 It has a yellowish wood, used in construction in Cambodia (called srô:l in Khmer), where it is graded 2nd category (not as good as 1st, but above others).