Plants 15-30 cm tall. Rhizomes short, erect, scaly; scales brown, lanceolate or ovate-lanceolate, ca. 4 mm, membranous, margin entire. Fronds clustered; stipe stramineous or brown-stramineous, slightly lustrous, 4-12 cm, 1-1.5 mm in diam., articulate at or near top, with linear or linear-lanceolate scales and long multicellular hairs; lamina 1-pinnate, linear-lanceolate or narrowly lanceolate, 10-23 × 1.5-3 cm, papery or herbaceous, abaxially with mixture of linear scales and long hairs, adaxially glabrous or with few long hairs, base attenuate, apex acuminate; rachis long hairy; pinnae 16-30 pairs, sessile, spreading or slightly oblique, entire or undulate; lower 3 or 4 pairs of pinnae reduced and reflexed downward, basal pair of pinnae triangular; middle pinnae largest, elliptic-lanceolate, slightly falcate, 8-20 × 4-7 mm, base asymmetrical, acroscopically auriculate, truncate, basiscopically cuneate, apex acute. Veins obvious, pinnate, veinlets 2-forked, ending in submarginal hydathodes. Sori orbicular, terminal at tips of acroscopic veinlets, submarginal; indusia cup-shaped, shallowly lobed, ciliate. 2n = 82.