Description: This is a small plant which superficially resembles a tuft of moss rather than a fern. The individual leaves are very thin and transparent, and divided into parallel-sided, toothed segments. The sporangia are produced singly inside a two-lipped structure called the indusium at the ends of the leaf-segments. This indusium is untoothed in Wilson's Filmy-fern, but toothed in the much rarer, but otherwise similar, Tunbridge Filmy-fern. The plant is frequent in damp shaded rock crevices such as in block scree in the Mourne Mountains.

All names: Hymenophyllum wilsonii Hook.; Hymenophyllum peltatum auct.; Hymenophyllum unilaterale auct.

Distribution Map from NBN: Hymenophyllum wilsonii at National Biodiversity Network mapping facility, data for UK.

iNaturalist: Hymenophyllum wilsonii at iNaturalist World Species Observations database.