Rhizome shortly creeping; rhizome scales brown, ± shiny, linear-lanceolate in outline, ± 2.5 mm long. Fronds tufted. Sterile fronds 30–35 cm long with stipe 15–20 cm long; lamina with much wider ultimate lobes than in fertile fronds, often twice as wide, up to 12 mm wide with spinous margins. Fertile fronds 40–50 cm long with stipe 23 cm long, with scales only at extreme base, otherwise glabrous; lamina ovate-triangular in outline, 20–25 x 20–22 cm, essentially bipinnate or partly tripinnate but rhachises of pinnae finely winged; lowest pair of pinnae 13–18 cm long, tripartite, each part very deeply pinnatifid or in some fronds the acroscopic pinnule only slightly lobed; terminal lobes linear-lanceolate, up to ± 8 x 0.6–0.7 mm, lateral lobes similar but shorter; upper pinnae in 1–2 pairs and terminal pinnaesimilar to lower pinnae, all with similar long terminal lobes; lateral lobes of all pinnae in 2–5 pairs; costae and costulae spinulose above, the former deeply channelled; veins free, forked or simple. Sori extending for almost entire length of lobes save for apex which is spine-tipped.

mkomaziensis: first found in Mkomazi Game Reserve, Tanzania.

Evergreen forest of Croton megalocarpus, Heywoodia lucens, Diospyros abyssinica, Manilkara discolor and Nuxia floribunda, on ridgetop; c. 1500m.

See African distribution.

Tanzania .

Terrestrial.