Distribution
United States of America

Native to: Alabama, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Masachusettes, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Nova Scotia, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode I., South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia.

Stems long-creeping, slender; scales brown, many, broadly lanceolate. Leaves dimorphic, deciduous, few, well separated; sterile leaves 40-58 cm, fertile leaves 49-70 cm. Petiole reddish brown proximally, straw-colored distally; base not swollen, with sparsely set brown scales. Blade bright green, generally lanceolate, scaly-glandular upon emergence but soon glabrate; sterile leaves pinnatifid, 13-26 cm; fertile leaves pinnate, sharply contracted, 20-27 cm. Pinnae not articulate to rachis, arranged in 7-12 alternate pairs; sterile pinnae lanceolate, 3-11 × 1-2.5 cm; fertile pinnae contracted, linear, 3-11 × 0.2-0.5 cm. Veins anastomosing into 2 or more rows of areoles between costae and margin, free only at blade margin. Sori linear-oblong, deeply sunken into blades, nearly occupying full breadth of blade. Indusia ± membranous, lacking thickened cells, tucked under sporangia, not recurving but mostly disintegrating with age. 2 n = 70.
Acidic bogs, seeps, and wet woods, rarely on rock of siliceous cliffs and ledges on northern edge of range; 0-600 m.