Botany
Monarch fern is an epiphyte, with wide, creeping and glabrescent rhizomes. Stipes are scattered, 5 to 40 cm long, and naked. Fronds are variable in size, from simple-lanceolate to deeply pinnatifid, 10 to 40 cm long. Costae are prominent but the venation is hardly visible. Sori are very large, shallowly immersed, and conspicuous on the upper surface, in single rows along the main veins, or scattered, but not numerous.

Distribution
Growing in the crown or trunks of trees and on rocks along streams, at low and medium altitudes.
Commonly distributed in the Philippines.
Also found from Polynesia across Africa.

Constituents
Yields glycirrhizin and saponin.

Properties
Aromatic, aperative, diaphoretic.

Parts used
Young leaves.

Uses
Folkloric
In Indo-China, young leaves of the fern used in chronic diarrhea.
Others
• Repellent: Young fronds spread on bed to keep off bed bugs.

Studies
• Ecdysteroids: Ecdysteroids might be responsible for some of M. scolopendria's medicinal properties. Study showed it to be an excellent source of ecdysone and 20-hydroxyecdysone, and also significant amounts of makisterones A and C, inokosterone and amarasterone A, with smaller amounts of poststerone.

Availability
Wild-crafted.

Additional Sources and Suggested Readings
(1)
A Review on the Potential Uses of Ferns / M Mannar Mannan, M Maridass and B Victor / Ethnobotanical Leaflets 12: 281-285. 2008.
(2)
Ecdysteroids from the medicinal fern Microsorum scolopendria (Burm. f.) / Eva Snogan, Isabelle Vahirua-Lechat et al / Phytochemical Analysis, Volume 18, Issue 5, pages 441–450, September 2007 / DOI: 10.1002/pca.1000