Plants terrestrial, (60-)100-200 cm tall. Rhizome erect or rarely creeping, rhizome apex and stipe base densely covered with linear scales; scales on stipe bases narrow, 1.5-3 cm, usually twisted, their edges entire or finely toothed. Fronds clustered; stipe usually dark brown at base and light brown distally. Lamina 2-pinnate to 4-pinnatifid, ovate to subpentagonal, widest at base; basal pinnae always largest, triangular, with greatly enlarged basiscopic pinnules; distal pinnae or pinnules adnate to rachis or costae and ± decurrent at their bases, pinnae and pinnules ± deeply lobed, with a tooth in each sinus between two lobes; veins along costae anastomosing, without free veinlets within areoles; lamina papery or rarely membranous, usually glabrous on both surfaces and with cylindric glands along costules and veins on abaxial surfaces; rachises and costae usually raised on both sides, ctenitoid hairs present on adaxial surfaces of rachises. Sori dorsal on free veins; indusia present or not; spores ellipsoid to spheroidal, perispore compressed in winglike folds or cristate with echinulations. n = 41.

About 20 species: tropical Asia, from NE India, SE China, throughout Malaysia and the W Pacific to Samoa; two species in China.

(Authors: Dong Shiyong (董仕勇); Maarten J. M. Christenhusz)