Rhizome short-creeping to erect up to 3 cm in height and 0.5-2 cm diam., scales 0.4-1 by 0.1-0.3 cm, ovate, acuminate, shiny, entire, concolorous, dark reddish brown or bicolorous with paler margins. Fronds both sterile and fertile heteromorphic, erect, 7-80 by 1-23 cm, sterile fronds simple or pinnatisect, fertile fronds simple, pinnatisect or pinnate. Stipes below decurrent wings of lamina 1-13 cm long, brown, stramineous to reddish brown, darkest at base, scales narrowly elliptic to ovate, entire, dark reddish brown to bicolorous. Lamina narrowly elliptic (simple fronds), narrowly elliptic to ovate (dissected fronds) with up to 7 pairs of pinnae or lobes, usually continuous narrow wings of lamina tissue extending down rhachis below main area of lamina. Rhachis and costae stramineous to brown or reddish brown, especially on abaxial surface, glabrous. Sterile pinnae or lobes narrowly elliptic, acuminate, 2-13 by 0.7-3.2 cm, firm, fleshy, brittle and dark green when fresh, usually coriaceous when dry, adnate and decurrently winged at rhachis, margins thin, reflexed, entire or minutely undulate (undulations associated with glands and vein endings), basal pinnae with decurrent wings extending down rhachis. Fertile pinnae or lobes of dissected fronds linear, to 25 by 0.3-0.5 cm, adnate to rhachis and decurrently winged. Sori covering undersurface of pinnae and wings. Spores 40.2 by 29.9 µm (from 9 Australian herbarium specimens), perine smooth, scaberulous, granulose or minutely rugulose, exine smooth to minutely verrucose.
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