Rhizome without the scales 10-15 mm diam., not white waxy. Scales brown or red-brown without pale border, narrowed evenly towards the apex, curling backward or not, not bearing multiseptate hairs, toothed, basifixed with cordate base and greatly overlapping lobes, 5-20 by 2-4 mm. Stipes pale, adaxially grooved, 15-60 cm long, glabrous or with few scales. Lamina compound, tripinnate towards the base and in the middle part, deltoid and broadest towards the base, glabrous, 60-100 by 40-70 cm, leaf not or slightly dimorphous. Longest petiolules 4-35 mm long. Pinnae deltoid. Longest pinnae 8-45 by 5-30 cm. Pinnules of at least the larger pinnae anadromous, deltoid. Longest pinnules 70-200 by 40-110 mm. Ultimate leaflets linear oblong or narrowly ovate, lobed halfway towards the midrib. Ultimate segments 5-27 by 2-6 mm. Upper ridge at the junction of the costa and pinna-rachis not swollen. Leaf axes glabrous. Margins of the lamina of each leaflet not thickened. Veins in sterile ultimate lobes pinnate (or forked in very narrow lobes), reaching the margin. False veins not present (rarely present and plant like D. denticulata var. elata). Sori separate, borne several on a segment (if one on a lobe, the lobe not narrowed at base), at the forking point of veins. Indusium also attached along the sides, pouch-shaped, oblong, longer than wide, 1-1.5 by 0.3-0.5 mm, upper margin elongated, free, protruding beyond lamina margin. Lamina generally extending into a tooth at both sides of a sorus.
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