Majestic columnar tree to 50 m tall, up to 2 m diam., crown large, often dome-shaped. Leaves of primary shoots imbricate; leaves of juvenile foliage shoots distichous, nearly linear, up to 10-17 mm long by 1.2-2.2 mm wide at the centre of a shoot, gradually losing the distichous habit as the tree matures, but shoots with more or less bilaterally flattened leaves distinctly longer in the middle of the shoot almost always present on even the oldest trees. Terminal shoots on young plants often elongated whip-like up to 20 cm. Leaves on older trees eventually becoming mostly scale-like, imbricate, distinctly keeled on the dorsal side, long-triangular, 1-1.8 by 0.4-0.6 mm. Involucral leaves becoming spreading, acicular, 2.5-4 mm long, rarely to 5 mm. Ripe receptacle red.
Mostly scattered and common in primary and secondary rain-forest, not rarely as an emergent, and co-dominant in West Java with Podocarpus ne-riifolius and A Itingia noronhae, on the south slope of Mt Tjeremai volcano characterizing the zone between 2400-2700 m without other co-dominants, a situation not yet explained (VAN STEENIS, 1972), in Timor found under more or less seasonal conditions in isolated specimens laden with Usnea in grassland after deforestation, mostly between 1000-2500 m, but in Lombok reported as low as 200 m and in Celebes ascending to 3000 m. Probably exterminated at lower elevations in Java by deforestation. Male flowers at Tjibodas in Aug.-Sept. Sometimes the stem of full-grown trees produces sprouts at the base (VAN STEENIS, 1940).
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