Neoathyrium Ching & Z. R. Wang.

Plants hygrophytic, evergreen or summer-green. Rhizome mostly creeping, ascending or erect, few thinly creeping, apex and bases of stipes scaly; scales brown or red-brown, lanceolate, ovate-lanceolate, or ovate, entire; fronds approximate or caespitose, occasionally distant. Stipe fleshy or herbaceous, flattened when dry, base thickened and often warty, deeply grooved on adaxial side, subglabrous; lamina variably dissected from 2-pinnatilobate to 3-pinnate or more, elliptic to ovate-deltoid, apex acuminate; pinnae lanceolate or broadly lanceolate, or lower pinnae ovate-lanceolate, sessile or shortly stalked, subspreading, asymmetrical or nearly symmetrical, apex acuminate or long acuminate; pinnules often pinnatilobate; rachis and costae broadly grooved between narrow ridges on adaxial side, fleshy hornlike processes borne in grooves at base of costae and costules; veins free, pinnate, veinlets simple, bifurcate to pinnate, not reaching lamina margin. Lamina brown-green, dark brown, or black-brown, glabrous, or rachis or costae abaxially with multicellular short nodose hairs and sparsely lanceolate brown scales, rarely with unicellular short hairs. Sori linear, elliptic, or orbicular, on veinlets, exindusiate. Spores bilateral, elliptic in polar view, semicircular or reniform in equatorial view, perispore prominent, surface with few-rugate ornamentation. x = 40.

Cornopteris crenulatoserrulata (species no. 12) was assigned to the monotypic genus Neoathyrium, which was recognized in FRPS (3(2): 94. 1999).

Knapp (Ferns Fern Allies Taiwan, 442. 2011) noted that Cornopteris philippinensis M. Kato has been reported for Taiwan but that the voucher specimen (Murakami, Saiki & Chen 344) differs from Philippine material and might instead correspond to a form of C. opaca. He lists its status for Taiwan as unconfirmed.

About 16 species: mainly distributed in tropical and subtropical Asia; 12 species (six endemic) in China.

(Authors: He Zhaorong (和兆荣); Masahiro Kato)