Rhizome short-creeping, covered with narrow, brown, whiskered scales. Fronds to a maximum of about 1 m long and 20 cm wide, divided once, erect or arching, soft. Stalk and midrib yellowish and softly hairy. Blade elliptic in outline. Segment lobes generally cut at least half way to the midrib, all softly hairy, basal segments much reduced and often well separated. Sori roundish. Indusium kidney-shaped, soft-hairy.
Needs shelter and warmth.
Binung is the Koori name. A vigorous fern that has the potential to become weedy.
Tropics and subtropics except America.
Segment lobes cut to two-thirds of the way to the midrib; segments reducing in length to the base of the frond.
Christella subpubescens (Blume) Holttum, which occurs naturally from Queensland to SE Asia, is sometimes cultivated and similar. However it differs in generally having the lower frond branches clearly reduced and the marginal lobes cut only one third of the way to the midrib, and more than one vein pair meeting below the region of lobe fusion.
Source: (1995). Thelypteridaceae. In: . Horticultural Flora of South-eastern Australia. Volume 1, Ferns, conifers & their allies. The identification of garden and cultivated plants. University of New South Wales Press.