Large thick-set fern with stout black, erect rhizome up to 80cm tall and 30cm in diameter. Fronds tufted, erect, glabrous at maturity, up to 1.8m long. Lamina are 2-pinnate, pinnae linear to lanceolate, margins crenate; rachis narrowly winged; large sori are round to ovate covering undersurface of pinnules of the basal third of the lower pinnae.

After: German clergyman and botanist H.J.Tode (1733- 1797).

Latin: barbarus = strange, wild; possibly referring to the foreign or strange nature of the plant when Linnaeus first saw and described it in 1753.