Naturalised in WA, SA, Qld, ACT. Rhizome densely covered by dark brown scales. Fronds arched, up to 1 m long. Stipe densely covered in very large chestnut-brown scales. Lamina narrowly ovate or narrowly elliptic, once pinnate, leathery, glossy, often scaly. Pinnae up to 15 pairs, stalked, curved, upper pinnae ovate, lower pinnae oblong, all acuminate, margins irregularly toothed, lobed on one side at base. Sori spread across undersurface of pinnae.
Commonly cultivated. Sparingly established, where known from a specimen collected in 1959 from an apparently naturalised occurrence at the base of Mt Buffalo, near Eurobin Falls in north-east Victoria, and a collection from 2022, from Winchelsea, where growing among blue-stone bricks under a bridge.
In its native habitat, this species has entire or distally entire pinnae, while naturalized populations, derived from cultivated forms, can have more extensively toothed pinnae.
