Plants 30-50 cm tall. Rhizome ascending or prostrate, slender, 4-5 mm in diam., apex with black-brown scales. Fronds dense, dimorphic; sterile fronds 1.5-2(-3) cm apart, shorter than fertile fronds; stipe and rachis straw-colored, slightly lustrous, stipe 10-30 cm (stipes of sterile fronds shorter), 1.5-2 mm in diam., glabrescent; lamina oblong-ovate, 10-25 × 5-15 cm, pinnate to bipinnate; pinnae 2-6 pairs, opposite, slightly decumbent, upper ones sessile, lower pairs shortly stalked; sterile fronds often pinnate, triangular in outline, 2.5-3.5(-8) × 1.5-2.5(-8) cm, acuminate; pinnules (1 or)2 or 3 pairs, opposite, contiguous, sessile, decumbent, oblong-oblanceolate to broadly lanceolate, basally decurrent and entire, upward and apices with acute teeth, apex obtuse; pinnae of fertile fronds distant (basal pairs 5-7 cm apart), 1-3-forked, middle fork longest, apical pinnae not decurrent at base, basal two pairs sometimes pinnate; pinnules 2 or 3(or 4) pairs, decumbent, narrowly linear, basally decurrent, margins entire except at apices, sterile parts with dense teeth, apically acuminate; midvein straw-colored, adaxially prominent; veins dense, often forked; lamina gray-green to brown-green, sometimes with nearly white bands along each side of midvein, herbaceous when dried, glabrous. n = 58.
Rhizome creeping or ascending, 3-5 mm diam., closely invested with stipe bases, clothed at apex with a tuft of reddish-brown, narrowly deltateattenuate scales 1.5-2 mm long. Fronds clustered erect, glabrous, loosely oblong or lanceolate in outline, 15-60 cm long, 2-pinnate below the usually simple distal pinnae, somewhat dimorphic, the sterile ones shorter and more spreading than the fertile; stipes mostly 5-25 cm long, often equalling or exceeding the blades, greenish or straw-colored, subquadrangular, deeply grooved adaxially. Blades either fully sterile, partly fertile and sterile, or wholly fertile; lower 1-3 pairs of pinnae cut to the costa (or nearly so) into 1-3 pairs of pinnules or segments; sterile ultimate divisions mostly 5-10 mm broad, the apex broadly rounded, the margins piculateserrulate; apical segment lanceolate and 1-3 cm long; veins mostly 1 -forked. Fertile ultimate divisions mostly 3-6 mm broad, linear and greatly elongate, the apical one 5-18 cm long, the lateral ones simple or pinnatifid, with segments decurrent onto the costa; tissue thin-herbaceous, in Puerto Rican plants light green with a central whitish stripe. Indusium 0.5 mm wide, pale or whitish, entire.
Rhizome short-creeping, bearing rather close fronds, about 5 mm diam., densely scaly; scales up to 4 by 0.7 mm, lanceolate with long tail, brown, entire. Frond distinctly dimorphic. Sterile frond: stipe 7–15 cm long, brown and scaly at base, stramineous upwards, grooved on abaxial surface; lamina oblong, acute at apex, tripinnatifid, about 15 by 7 cm; pinnae 2–5 pairs, opposite, with a few pairs of pinnules and large apical segments; pinnules simple to trifoliolate, the ultimate segments oblong to oblong-lanceolate, apex moderately acute or acuminate in larger ones, 1.5–4(–7) by 0.7–1 cm, minutely serrate at margin; veins ascending, forked, all free, firm, green. Fertile frond taller; stipe 20–55 cm long; lamina bipinnate at base, up to 30 by 20 cm; pinnae a few pairs, simple to trifoliolate, ultimate segments linear, 7–17 by 0.5–1 cm, caudately acuminate at apex, broadly cuneate to subtruncate at base, serrate at upper non-soriferous margin. Sori linear, submarginal, continuous almost from base to apex; indusia pale green.
On mountain slopes or on floor of usually tropical rain forests at low altitudes in Peninsular, or in dry evergreen forests at low to medium altitutdes in Northern to South-Eastern.
Tropics of Old World, Ceylon (type) to Australia and Polynesia throughout Malesia, north ot India, S. China, Indochina and the Ryukyus.
