Terrestrial, rarely taller than 50 (80) cm. Leaves usually several, closely clustered on a short-creeping, scaly rhizome, usually 1-pinnate (often 2-pinnate elsewhere); petiole and rachis dark brown, with fine, short threadlike scales persisting at least on rachis; leaflets nearly oblong, blunt to acute at apex, l-3 cm long, glabrate beneath (elsewhere sometimes with filiform scales), midrib very near lower margin, the lower edge +/- straight, the proximal edge paralleling the rachis, the upper and distal edges of sterile leaflets unevenly and coarsely serrate. Sori interrupted along upper and distal margins. Croat 8576. Occasional, in the forest. Distinguished by its small, coarsely serrate leaflets. The species is easily confused with and possibly not separable from A. tetraphyllum H. & B. ex Willd., which has a long-creeping rhizome with the petiole bases not closely crowded as in A. fructuosum. Moreover, in A. tetraphyllum the sterile apices of the leaflets are acute and turned toward the apex of the pinnae, whereas in A. fructuosum they are mostly straight and obtuse. Mexico to Brazil; West Indies. In Panama, known from tropical moist forest in the Canal Zone, San Blas, Panama, and Darien, from premontane wet forest in Panama and Coclé, and from tropical wet forest in Colon.