Flora of North America species comparison

± compact, short-creeping, ascending at tip, branched;

scales mostly dark brown, often with very narrow margin of lighter color, lanceolate, margins entire.

monomorphic or often somewhat dimorphic, 8–25 cm;

fertile leaves more erect than sterile leaves, long-petioled, petioles often 2–5 times longer than blades, fertile blades with more ascending pinnae and narrower segments than sterile blades.

monomorphic to somewhat dimorphic, crowded, 8–35 cm.

usually dark reddish brown, with single groove adaxially, glabrous, with single vascular bundle.

3–4-pinnate, 2–10 cm, somewhat leathery.

ovate-triangular, deltate, or pentagonal, 3–4(–5)-pinnate, thick to thin, abaxially glabrous, adaxially lustrous, striate, glabrous;

rachis straight.

linear, 3–8 mm;

midrib prominent abaxially.

of blades short-stalked or with base narrowed and decurrent onto costa or costule-bearing segments, linear to lanceolate, mostly 0.5–1.3 mm wide;

stalks greenish, not darkened;

fertile margins recurved.

of ultimate segments obscure, free, ± pinnate and unbranched.

appearing inframarginal, scarious, whitish, broad, partly concealing sporangia.

of mature blades continuous along length of segments except at apex;

indusia linear, margins with 10–35, shallow, regular teeth or erose.

in marginal, discrete or continuous sori on abaxial surface, containing 64 spores, lacking paraphyses and glands.

dark brown, tetrahedral-globose, trilete, reticulate, equatorial flange absent.

= 30.

= 60.