Floating form: stipe 13-30 cm long, hairless to slightly hairy. Leaflets 7-17 × 5.5-15 mm, obovate to obdeltate, outer margin entire to slightly irregular, hairless. Dry land form: stipe up to 21 cm long. Leaflets 5-20 × 4-19 mm, narrowly obovate-obdeltate, outer margins irregularly incised, slightly hairy to hairless. Sporocarps: solitairy, buried in the soil; 3.5-7 mm long, 3-5 mm high, up to 3 mm thick; old specimens blackish, sub-rectangular to broadly elliptic in lateral view, vertical cross-section elliptic to rectangular, usually without a groove on upper and outer side; densely appressed hairy; lower tooth absent, upper tooth short, broadly conical, obtuse; pedicels up to c.10 mm long, straight or curved, growing downwards thus burying the sporocarp into the soil, hairless.

It can be distinguished from other species by sporocarps that grow downwards into the ground, also there are no translucent streaks present in the leaflets.

vera: verutum: javelin; which, like the sporocarps of this fern, pegs itself into the ground.

Deciduous woodland, usually in sandy soils along the margins of seasonal pans and vleis.

See African distribution.

Botswana, Ethiopia, Namibia, Zimbabwe.

Aquatic, terrestrial.