Plants evergreen. Rhizome erect or ascending, short, densely covered with linear brown scales. Fronds 50-70 cm; stipe yellowish brown, 23-38 cm, ca. 3 mm in diam. at base, densely covered with linear, lanceolate and larger scales; large scales bicolorous, blackish brown at middle, shiny, ovate-lanceolate or broadly lanceolate, up to 16 × 2.5-6 mm, subentire, caudate. Lamina bipinnate, oblong-lanceolate or deltoid-lanceolate, 36-45 cm, lower part 13-17 cm wide, base slightly contracted, 1 or 2 pairs of lower pinnae often sterile, apex acuminate, fertile; rachis often with blackish powder and becoming blackish brown, without proliferous bulbils, abaxially covered with linear and subulate scales; scales dark brown, subentire. Pinnae 14-16 pairs, alternate, attached at right angles to rachis, shortly stalked, lanceolate; pinnae of basal lamina 5-10 × 1.7-2.2 cm, bases asymmetrical, 1-pinnate, apices acuminate, fertile; costa often with blackish powder and becoming blackish brown, abaxially covered with linear dark brown scales, adaxially sulcate. Pinnules 9-16 pairs, alternate, shortly stalked, falcate-deltoid, 1.2-1.6 × 0.5-0.6 cm, bases cuneate, with conspicuous deltoid auricles, apices acuminate, margins subentire or shallowly toothed, teeth spinulose at tip, sometimes several pinnules near rachis sterile; basal acroscopic pinnules largest, nearly pinnatipartite to midrib; abaxially sparsely covered with shortly filiform microscales, adaxially subglabrous; frond texture papery; venation pinnate, lateral veins 6-8 pairs, dichotomous, distinct. Sori 5-7 pairs per pinnule, in 1 row on each side of midrib, close to pinnule margins, terminal on veinlets; indusia present, erose. 2n = 82*.