Japan Flora: Rhi­zomes creeping, 2-3 mm. across, with lustrous, brown, broadly linear scales 2-25 mm. long; fronds glabrous; stipes 2-15 cm. long, slender, dark purple-brown, lustrous, scaly at base; blades broadly lanceolate to triangular-ovate, 4-20 cm. long, 2-10 cm. wide, simply pinnate, bi- to partially tripinnate, the rachis purple-brown, lustrous, slightly flexuous, slender; pinnae usu­ally 7-9 pairs, 3-4 pairs in depauperate blades, petiolulate; pinnules membranous, flabellate to broadly cuneate, 7-15 mm. long, nearly as wide, palmately 3- to 5-lobed, green above, long on the rachis and on the segments of both sides, especially on margin; usually glaucous beneath, slenderly veined on both sides, mi­nutely toothed along the upper margin; sori few on a pinnule, usually solitary on each of the ultimate pinnules; false indusia transversely oblong or slighdy reniform, glabrous, about 1.5 mm. long, 2-3.5 mm. wide.  Rocky cliffs.

Honshu (Sagamt Prov., Izu Isis.), Shikoku, Kyushu; rare.- Widely distri­buted in the tropics and subtropics of both hemispheres.