Ceratopteris pteridoides (Hook.) Hieron.

Plants usually floating, 20-30 cm tall. Stipe, rachis, and costa of lower pinnae all obviously expanded toward base, base of stipe narrowly cuneate, covered with roots. Fronds dimorphic. Sterile fronds green, smooth; stipe semicylindrical, 5-8 cm, ca. 1.5 cm in diam.; lamina ovate-triangular, simple and deeply divided, sometimes opposite-pinnate; lobes triangular to broadly loriform. Fertile fronds green when young and brownish when old, smooth; stipe 5-8 cm, 1-3 cm in diam.; lamina broadly triangular, 15-25 cm, 2-4-pinnate; ultimate lobe linear or siliquiform, 2-6 × ca. 0.2 cm, margin thin, strongly reflexed toward main vein to cover sori, apex acuminate. Sporangia attached to veinlets on both sides of main vein, covered with reflexed margin of lobe, brown, with 0-40 annulus cells, with 32 spores inside. Spore tetrahedral, below 100 μm in diam., with few parallel ridges. 2n = 78 (diploid).

A tropical plant. They float in ponds. They need a temperature above 24°C. It also grows on the soil of cultivated rice fields.

The fresh fronds can be eaten raw in salads. They are also cooked and eaten either alone or with other vegetables.

It spreads by buds of new plants in the notches of leaves.