Rhizome short, creeping; rhizome scales reddish brown, clathrate, lineair, up to 7 mm long. Fronds closely spaced, tufted, coriaceous. Stipe 8-15 cm long, scaly, dark brown, green on upper surface towards lamina. Lamina 9-20(30) × 4-9 cm, bipinnate, oblong-lanceolate in outline, 7-15 pairs of pinnae, basal pinnae not or very slightly reduced. Pinnae glabrous, elongate-trapeziform, 1-5 pinnules below the apex. Pinnules rounded, cuneate to spathulate, shiny dark green above, matt paler green below, margins irregular, shallowly toothed at slightly lobed apices. Sori 5-12 mm long, linear, almost totally covering the lower surface of the pinnules when mature; indusium entire.

A. schelpei is difficult to distinguish from other ferns in the A. aethiopicum-complex. A. schelpei has reddish brown, clathrate, linear rhizome scales; the lamina is 2-pinnate, thickly leathery, shiny bright dark green above & matt, paler green below; it often forms colonies. In the A. aethiopicum-complex rhizome scales are light to very dark brown, narrowly subulate to linear; lamina is more divided (deeply 2-pinnatifid to 3-pinnate) and is herbaceous to leathery.

Schelpei: named after E.A.C.L.E. Schelpe

Full sun or light shade at base of boulders on rocky outcrops, in quartzite and granite rock crevices.

See African distribution.

South Africa, Zimbabwe.

Lithophytic, terrestrial.