Plants 15-30 cm tall. Rhizomes erect, short, scales lanceolate. Fronds clustered; stipe castaneous-black, 4-12 cm, densely rufous-brown multicellular villous; lamina 1-pinnate, lanceolate in outline, 12-15 × 1.2-2.4 cm; costae same color as stipe, also with stiff hairs, apex acuminate, occasionally prolonged into a whiplike stolon and rooting to form new plantlets; pinnules 20-25 pairs, alternate, mostly horizontally spreading, basal pair obliquely reflexed, semidimidiate, 1-1.4 × 0.4-0.6 cm, progressively smaller distally, papery, greenish, abaxially covered with stiff brown multicellular hairs, adaxially with lax short hairs, base asymmetrical, lower margin straight and entire, inner margins substraight, upper margin truncate, entire or undulate-crenate; terminal pinnules small, obtriangular, base cuneate, outer margins rounded and 2-5-lobed; veins multidichotomously forked, visible on both surfaces. Sori 2 or 3 per pinnule; false indusia dark brown, rectangular, papery, hairy on upper sides, upper margins flat and straight, entire, persistent.

Adiantum sinicum is listed as endangered in the IUCN Red Book (China Plant Specialist Group 2004. In: IUCN 2012. IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Version 2012.2. ; accessed 16 Apr 2013).

● On soil by sides of limestone rocks; ca. 1600 m. Yunnan.