Plants 25-60 cm tall. Rhizomes creeping, slender, scales black, lanceolate, also brown multicellular villous. Fronds approximate; stipe black-purple, glossy, 10-20 cm, base densely scaly and villous, hairs easily rubbed off when dried to leave rough feeling surface, distally smooth; lamina 3- or 4-pinnate, broadly ovate to triangular in outline, 20-40 × 19-25 cm, apex acuminate; primary pinnae 5-7 each side, 2- or 3-pinnate, obliquely spreading, stalks ca. 1 cm; rachis and costae same color as stipe, glabrous; basal 1 or 2 pairs of pinnae largest, triangular, 8-18 × 4-9 cm; pinnules 2-4, alternate; stalk castaneous-red, ca. 1 mm, hairlike; blade flabellate, 5-9 × 4-11 mm, thinly herbaceous, green, both surfaces glabrous, base symmetrical, cuneate, bilateral margins entire, apex rounded, with dense short and broad triangular serrations sometimes with cartilaginous, often crooked, tips extended into long awns; veins multidichotomously forked, reaching tips of serration, visible on both surfaces. Sori 1-4 per pinnule; false indusia dark brown, orbicular or orbicular-reniform, membranous, upper margins deeply sinuate, entire, persistent. Perispore indistinctly granular.

● Slightly acidic damp soil in forests, rock crevices at forest margins; 1400-2500 m. Guizhou, Sichuan, Yunnan.