It is native to Cameroon, Gabon, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Nigeria, and the Republic of the Congo.

[2] Adolf Engler and Ludwig Diels, the botanists who first formally described the species using the basionym Uvaria insculpta, named it after the secondary veins on its leaves which are distinctly sunken (insculptus in Latin).

The leaves are hairless to very sparsely hairy on their dark green upper and lower surfaces.

Its petioles are 1–4 by 1 millimeters, and covered in dense red-brown hairs, with an indistinct groove on their upper side.

The sepals are light green to pale yellow and darker at their margins which are slightly folded.

The white to pale yellow to light brown, oval inner petals are 1–2 by 0.6–1 centimeters with densely hairy upper and lower surfaces.

[5] It has been observed growing lowland primary and secondary rain forests at altitudes up to 400 meters.