Lithocarpus bancanus grows up to 25 m tall and 50 cm bole diameter. It has smooth or scaly type of bark. The colour range of the bark is from yellowish to greyish brown while its inner bark is pinkish, with a yellowish heartwood. The twigs are smooth or sparsely lenticellate. The surfaces of the broadly elliptic leaves are rarely coriaceous (leathery texture), glabrous above, sparsely yellowish to brownish densely matted woolly hairs and occasionally combined with a few stellate hairs below. Both male and female flowers are arranged in solitary along the rachis with acute perianth lobes. The cupules are also distributed singly along the rachis. The saucer-shaped cupule contains one depressed ovoid acorn with woody wall and it encloses less than half of the acorn (Soepadmo & Saw, 2000).

Lithocarpus bancanus can be discovered in hill mixed dipterocarp forest on clay and sandstone-derived soils at an altitude of up to 900 m. This species is uncommon and distributed in Sumatra, Peninsular Malaysia and Borneo. Mount Silam in Lahad Datu district is the only place recorded from Sabah. In Sarawak, it is only known from Kuching district and recorded in a peatswamp forest (Soepadmo & Saw, 2000).