Egenolfia Schott; Poecilopteris C. Presl.

Plants small to medium-sized, terrestrial or creeping on rocks or riverbanks or small trees. Rhizome creeping or shortly erect, dorsiventral, covered with ovate to linear-lanceolate, brown or blackish scales. Fronds dimorphic, evergreen, simple, pinnate, or rarely bipinnate. Sterile fronds: stipe with ovate or lanceolate brown scales at base; lamina mostly ± herbaceous, apex usually with a bulbil, margin entire or crenate to deeply lobed, with or without teeth or spines, veins either free or variously anastomosing, with or without included free veinlets. Fertile fronds similar in shape to sterile ones, usually with longer stipe and narrower lamina. Sori acrostichoid, without indusia. Spores globose or nearly so, with thick epispores.

About 80 species: pantropical, mainly in Asia and Pacific islands; 25 species including three putative hybrids (twelve endemic) in China.

(Authors: Xing Fuwu (邢福武), Wang Faguo (王发国); Kunio Iwatsuki)