Asplenium formosum Willd.

formosum: beautiful, finely formed

Rhizome c. 3 mm thick, erect; scales brown with pale entire borders, up to 3 mm long. Fronds tufted, not proliferous. Stipe short, up to 3 cm long, stipe and rhachis blackish-brown to black, narrowly winged. Lamina 10-31 cm × 1.3-3.5 cm, pinnate to 2-pinnatifid, narrowly lanceolate to linear in outline. Pinnae up to 50 pairs, glabrous, lower pinnae gradually reducing in size, margins entire on the basiscopic side and deeply incised into linear simple or bifid lobes on the acroscopic side. Sori 1 to 3 per pinna, linear to oval, situated on the basal margins of the pinnae, indusium entire.

Angola, Burundi, Cameroon, Cote d'Ivoire, DRC, Ghana, Guinea, Kenya, Liberia, Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria, Soa Tomé, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Togo, Zambia, Zimbabwe, also Tropical America and Indian subcontinent.