Plants up to 1 m tall or more. Rhizome erect, stout, densely clothed with lanceolate to narrowly lanceolate, entire, red-brown or brown scales. Fronds caespitose; stipe stramineous, ca. 30 cm, ca. 8 mm in diam.; scales brown to dark brown usually with a black base, lanceolate, ca. 2 cm, with filiform apex; lamina ovate-lanceolate or lanceolate, bipinnatipartite, base slightly narrowed, apex acuminate; pinnae 25-30 pairs, alternate, remote, middle pinnae lanceolate, 12-14 cm, widest at base, 2.5-3 cm wide, shortly stalked, apex acuminate; segments 13-22 pairs, slightly oblique, apex truncate or obtuse, seldom becoming rounded, with triangular-lanceolate, acute teeth, with translucent, cartilaginous edges. Lamina papery, with lanceolate and linear-lanceolate, dark brown or brown, hastate scales; costae clothed with linear, brown scales and fibrillose scales; lateral veins pinnate, forked, prominent adaxially, apically with brown hydathodes. Sori 4-6 pairs on each segment, sorus position various; indusia brown, orbicular-reniform, caducous.

Tsuga or Picea forests, damp stream banks, crevices in stone walls; 1500-3600 m. Fujian, Guizhou, Jiangxi, Shanxi, Sichuan, Taiwan, Xizang, Yunnan [Bhutan, India, Japan, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal].