Rhizome creeping; rhizome scales blackish or black-veined with a latticed appearance, ± 1.5 mm long. Frond single, 15–40 cm tall. Stipe slender, 10–20 cm long with few scales and dense very short hairs. Lamina up to 20 x 15 cm, tripartite; pinnae confocal, simply pinnate to bipinnate, broadly lanceolate in outline, apex gradually tapering to a point, up to 18 x 6 cm; each pinnae with 6–9 pairs of pinnules; pinnules up to c. 5 x 2 cm, the apical ones reduced, toothed only at the apex, running together and narrowly decurrent into each other resembling a series of fish-tails; lower pinnules deeply divided into ± 6 elliptic lobes, the largest c. 15 x 8mm, ± entire to bluntly or subacutely lobed or toothed; main lobes of largest pinnules decurrent, separated by narrowly winged midrib 1–2 mm wide. Sori 1–4 per pinna-lobe, ± 1 mm wide; indusium fimbriate and hairy.

rondoense: this fern was first found on the Rondo plateau in Tanzania.

Evergreen forest of Milicia-Albizia-Dialium, in small gully and amphitheatre around well on escarpment, 650m.

See African distribution.

Tanzania .

Terrestrial.