Rhizome c. 4 mm. in diam., shortly creeping, with tufted fronds and with narrowly lanceolate brown rhizome-scales often with a dark central stripe and paler margins. Fronds proliferous below the apex and occasionally on the costae of basal pinnae, fertile fronds usually suberect, sterile fronds arching over to ground level, firmly herbaceous. Stipe castaneous, up to 19 cm. long, terete, ± pilose, later glabrous. Lamina up to 9 x 5.5 cm., narrowly ovate or lanceolate in outline, 2-pinnate or 2-pinnatifid, pilose on both surfaces; pinnae ovate to unequally deltate with entire crenate or pinnatifid lobes, somewhat produced basiscopically; costae and costules of the lower pinnae dark-castaneous, pilose below; rhachis terete, atrocastaneous-pilose. Sori marginal, forming an interrupted soral line at first; indusia very narrow, membranous.