Plants 5-15 cm. tall. Rhizomes long and creeping, densely covered with lanceolate brown scales; the scales longly caudate at apexes, margins ciliate. Fronds remote, dimorphic; stipes usually equal 0.5-1.5 time as long as laminal length, scaled at bases, upwards covered with stellate hairs, brown or greyly brown; laminae elliptic, apexes acute or hebetate, bases cuneate and decurrent, after dry thickly coriaceous, entire, greyly brown, pitted and covere with sparsely stellate hairs on upper surfaces, brownish at beginning, brick-red late and covered with stellate hairs of thick layer on under surfaces. Main veins slightly raised on under sides, depresed on upper sides, lateral veins and veinlets obscure. Sori spreading allover on under surfaces of laminae, expaded and confluent when maturity.

Diuretic and hemostatic (leaves)

Flora of China

Beta-sitosterol, mangiferin, isomangiferin, trifolin, kaempferol, diploptene, fumaric acid, boletic acid, caffeic acid, 2-butenedioic acid, chlorogenic acid

The dried leaves are useful in treating gonorrhea, hematuria, strangury, cough, asthma and bronchitis. It is also used to arrest bleeding in metrorrhagia, hemoptysis, and epistaxis.

Jing-Nuan Wu. An Illustrated Chinese Materia Medica. P: 540, Oxford University Press, Inc.2005.