Rhizome with rufous, lanceolate scales. Stipe grayish brown, 10-50 cm × ca. 4 mm, covered with lanceolate and fibrillar scales at base; lamina brownish green when dry, narrowly elliptic, 0.7-2 m or longer, 14-30 cm wide, papery, with sparse, lanceolate or linear scales when young, glabrous on both surfaces when mature; pinnae 30-55 pairs, 1.5-3 cm apart, subsessile, margin minutely serrulate, teeth remote, apex acute or acuminate, basal pairs of pinnae gradually shorter. Sori submedial, 1-2 mm apart, orbicular, 1.5-2 mm in diam.; indusia brown, orbicular-reniform, glabrous, sinus narrow.

Forests; near sea level to 800 m. Guangdong, Hainan, Taiwan, Yunnan [Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Japan (including Ryukyu Islands), Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Vietnam; Africa, SW Asia, Australia, North and South America, Pacific islands].