Adiantum silvaticum Tindale

Rhizome creeping, much-branched, c. 5 mm diam.; scales golden brown, concolorous, with shortly ciliate margins and setose apices. Fronds scattered, to 80 cm long. Stipe to 65 cm long, glossy, sometimes scabrous proximally. Lamina 2-or 3-pinnate at the base, triangular to pentagonal, 15–30 cm long, 15–30 cm wide, herbaceous to coriaceous, bright green or bluish green; rachis glossy and glabrous abaxially, black or with dark purple hue, densely clothed with antrorse red-brown hairs adaxially (rarely partially or completely glabrous). Higher order segments hastate or narrowly to broadly triangular. Primary pinnae all ± same length and degree of branching. Pinnules symmetric and flabellate, or dimidiate and trapeziform to rectangular with blunt or upcurved apices, glabrous, often glaucescent but never glaucous abaxially; veins arising in part from basiscopic submarginal vein. Sori 1–10 along the distal margins, commonly 1 per lobe; soral flaps rectangular to subreniform, glabrous. Spores yellow; perine finely granulose, loosely adhering to exine; largest diam. (31–) c. 42 (–58) µm.

Terrestrial in rainforest and tall hardwood forests, often showing a preference for poorer soils; occasionally lithophytic on sandstone cliffs along creeks or rivers.