It is a large evergreen rainforest emergent tree native to Fiji, Vanuatu, and the Santa Cruz Islands.

Large trees frequently feature a bole clear of branches for the first 20 meters and a buttressed trunk base.

[3] The initially brown and smooth bark weathers gray and develops vertical fissures with age, flaking in strips.

[3][4] The phyllotaxis is spiral though the leaves of the lateral shoots are twisted to lie pectinately in two ranks and appear nearly opposite.

The cylindrical male pollen cones are borne apically on short lateral or subterminal branchlets.

It grows in tropical lowland and montane rainforests ranging in altitude from near the sea level to 1800 meters.

It commonly occurs together with other tropical conifers such as trees of the genera Podocarpus, Dacrycarpus, Dacrydium and Agathis.