Anisophyllea apetala is a small tree that can reach up to 11 m tall and 24 cm in diameter. Anisophyllea is derived from two Greek words, anisos meaning unequal, phullon meaning leaf, which refer to the asymmetric leaves. Meanwhile, the epithet name is derived from the Greek words, a-, means without and ‘petalon’ means petal, which refers to the absence of the petals.

Anisophyllea apetala has pendulous branches; glabrous and slander when young. The bark is smooth, brownish-white to grey-green with rough markings and ridges. Its inner bark is yellow to pink. The inflorescences are spike-like to paniculate with flowers usually in groups on very short lateral stalks. The flowers are unisexual. The drupes are ellipsoid to ovoid in shape with yellow to green colour that turns to red-purple stripes when ripening. The ellipsoid seeds are blunt to slightly pointed at the tip (Nor-Ezzawanis, 2018).

This species is distributed in Southern Thailand (Gardner et al., 2015; Nor-Ezzawanis, 2018), Peninsular Malaysia and Borneo, Sabah (Chen et al., 2015; Nor-Ezzawanis, 2018). In Peninsular Malaysia, it locally occurs in Perak, Selangor, Terengganu, Pahang and Johor. It inhabits primary lowland mixed dipterocarp forests at an elevation between 70-600 m, and sometimes can also be found in disturbed forests (Kiew et al., 2018). The hard red-brown wood produced is locally used for house beams (Burkill, 1966; Nor-Ezzawanis, 2018).