Rhizome moderately long-creeping, 3-4 mm ø; scales light castaneous, narrowly triangular, to 5 mm long, to c. 10-seriate at base, there often with laterally protruding cell-walls, with a relatively short uniseriate apex. Leaves not close; petioles black, dull, somewhat verruculose at base, abaxially terete or very obtusely and in-distinctly bi-angular near the apex, c. 25 cm long, usually longer than the lamina. Lamina oblong or elongate-triangular, c. 15-25 cm long, described as lustrous on both sides when fresh, rigidly coriaceous, brown to blackish when dry, at the base tripinnate + pinnatifid, elsewhere bipinnate + pinnatifid, with c. 10 major pinnae to a side and some reduced upper ones; primary rachis brown to black, dull, abaxially like the petiole, near the apex subcarinate. Pinnae ascending, the basal ones triangular, c. 8 by 5 cm, the other ones oblong, c. 5-6 by 2 cm; basal pinnae with a basiscopic bipinnate + pinnatifid pinnule, otherwise the pinnae once pinnate, with the larger pinnules pinnatifid or pinnatilobate. Secondary axes dark or, especially the upper ones, pale, abaxially narrowed-rounded to subcarinate. Larger secondary pinnae with 5-8 segments on a flexuous costa, the segments alternate, linear-subspathulate, oblique, not close, decurrent, joined by narrow wings, the margin subrevolute, often 2-4 by 1 mm, with a broad, abaxially much elevated, obtuse, stramineous costule that occupies about 1/3 of its width and is often conspicuously broadened under the sorus. Apex of lobes obtuse, in the larger ones slightly oblique. Sori single (rarely paired) and apical in the lobes, uninerval; indusium dark, rigid, in larger lobes somewhat oblique on the vein, with ± straight base and convex free edge, adnate at the sides, 0.5-1 mm long, 0.5 mm wide, not quite reaching the margin. Spores medium brown, ellipsoidal, smooth, 60 by 45 μ.
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