The stipes are persistent, spiny and purplish towards the base, and covered in brown shiny scales.

The sori, producing the spores, are large and round.

Like many tree ferns, it features a "skirt" of dead leaves that do not drop off the crown and form a barrier for parasitic climbing plants.

[2] A. spinulosa occurs in humus soils in shadowed forest locations, and is widely distributed across Asia including China, Nepal, India, Burma, Myanmar, and Japan.

[2] In May 2022, the genome of A. spinulosa, was sequenced by Huang et al. and showed whole-genome duplication had occurred approximately 100 million years ago; since then, evidence of the sequencing suggests, the genome has remained stable.