Rhizome scales light brown, scalloped at the base, formed of thin-walled light brown cells, margins not entire, with some narrow extensions on the edges. Sterile fronds imparipinnate, with the terminal leaflet resembling the lateral ones, subcoracious. Stipe c. 15 cm long, strawcoloured-brown, with scales at the base. Lamina up to 50 x 20 cm, c. 10 pairs of pinnae. Pinnae angled, subsessile, lower pinnae slightly reduced, middle pinnae c. 14 x 3-4 cm, base rounded, apex subcaudate, abruptly ending in a long tail-like tip of c. 2.5 cm, margins wavy; veins raised, making an angle of 60 ° with the costa; rhachis winged at the top. Fertile fronds with 10 pairs of pinnae; pinnae 5-7 x 0.7 cm, sessile at top, with petiole towards the stipe; base rounded; rhachis without scales; sporangia covering the complete undersurface of the lamina.

rossii: type specimen was collected by A.F. Ross on the Cambridge Botanical Expedition in 1935 in Nigeria.

Rain forest.

See African distribution.

Cameroon, Dem. Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea (incl. Bioko), Gabon, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Nigeria.

Epiphytic.