Flora of New Zealand Series

Rhizomes creeping to erect, scaly, with numerous far-creeping runners. Stipes much < laminae. Stipes and rachises pale brown, brittle, bearing dark appressed fimbriate scales. Laminae elliptic to narrowly elliptic, 30-200 × 10-25 cm, pinnate. Primary pinnae in > 40 pairs, overlapping in middle of frond, more widely spaced at base, the longest 5-15 × 0.8-1.6 cm, with undersurfaces covered in scales with fimbriate margins, falcate with a basal acroscopic lobe, tapering to acute apices; margins irregularly crenate or serrate especially near apex. Sori round, in single rows near margins of pinnae, protected by reniform indusia.

K.: locally abundant on Raoul Id, also on Curtis Id.

Also indigenous to tropical Asia, Australia, and Pacific Is.

Open places, often associated with geothermally warm soils.

Kermadec Is material was previously referred to N. exaltata (L.) Schott, but this sp. is now regarded as confined to the American tropics (Sykes 1977).