Within its native range, it is primarily growing in seasonally dry tropical forests.

It is a handsome, small, erect evergreen tree, with deep green leaves growing in dense clusters.

It is becoming rarer in its natural habitat, but isolated wild ashoka trees are still to be found in the foothills of the central and eastern Himalayas, in scattered locations of the northern plains of India as well as on the west coast of the subcontinent near Mumbai.

[6] It is considered sacred throughout the Indian subcontinent, especially in India, Nepal and Sri Lanka.

Highly valued as well for its handsome appearance and the color and abundance of its flowers, the ashoka tree is often found in royal palace compounds and gardens as well as close to temples throughout India.

One of the recurring elements in Indian art, often found at gates of Buddhist and Hindu temples, is the sculpture of a yakshini with her foot on the trunk and her hands holding the branch of a flowering ashoka tree.

Not counting a multitude of local traditions connected to it, the ashoka tree is worshipped in Chaitra,[10] a month of the Hindu calendar.

It is a popular park and garden plant, much used in landscaping on the Indian subcontinent, known also as Devadaar or Debdaru.