Christella friesii (Brause) Holtt.

friesii: named after R.E. Fries, Swedish botanist and editor of Botanik 1 (1914), who collected this species for the first time in Zambia in 1911.

Rhizome short creeping; rhizome scales up to 4.5 mm long, dark brown, lanceolate, entire. Fronds closely spaced, erect, not proliferous, firmly membranous. Stipe up to 38 (85) cm long, pale brown, thinly set with minute white hairs. Lamina up to 1.7 × 0.6 m, narrowly oblong to roughly lanceolate in outline, deeply 2-pinnatifid, apex acute, basal 2 pairs of pinnae slightly reduced, then abruptly ending in a long series of much reduced pinnae, often less than 2 cm long. Pinnae linear-lanceolate in outline, apex tapering to a point, base truncate; ultimate lobes narrowly linear-oblong, falcate, margins entire to lobed; upper surface with hairs along the veins, costules and costae, lower surface hairs along the costae; veins not meeting below the sinus. Rhachis strawcoloured to pale brown, finely covered with short hairs. Sori round, up to 20 per lobe; indusia c. 0.5- 1 mm in diameter, circular to kidney-shaped with a few white hairs.

Angola, Cameroon, Congo, DRC, Kenya, Malawi, Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe.