Plants medium-sized, terrestrial. Rhizome short and erect, long creeping to ascending, apex with brown lanceolate scales. Fronds clustered, sparse or remote; stipe castaneous or red-brown, less often stramineous or tan, shiny, base sometimes with whitish acicular hairs, sometimes mixed with stellate hairs, distally often glabrescent and smooth; lamina pinnate-pinnatifid to bipinnate-pinnatifid, lanceolate, oblong-lanceolate, oblong, or ovate, tapering or not to base, acuminate and pinnatifid at apex; pinnae usually opposite or subopposite, spreading or obliquely spreading, pinnae below middle not adnate to rachis, sessile or shortly stalked, lanceolate or triangular-lanceolate, bases often broadened, truncate, symmetrical or not, sometimes hastate, apices acuminate; basiscopic segments sometimes longer than acroscopic segments, and basal segments on both sides sometimes prolonged; costae raised on both sides, usually same color as stipes and rachises or lighter colored, abaxially glabrous or with whitish acicular hairs, hairy adaxially; veins free, lateral veins simple or forked, each with a clavate hydathode at end and not reaching margin. Sori oblong, ovate, or suborbicular, borne at middle or above middle, exindusiate. Sporangia glabrous or with short hairs just below annulus. Spores bilateral, orbicular-reniform, perispores thin and transparent, reticulate or foveolate on surfaces, exospore smooth. x = 31.

Citations of Pseudophegopteris paludosa (Blume) Ching from China (Ching, Acta Phytotax. Sin. 8: 315. 1963; Tsai & Shieh, Fl. Taiwan, ed. 2, 1: 401. 1994), a species known with certainty only from Malesia (Holttum, Blumea 17: 91. 1969; Fl. Males., Ser. 2, 1: 347. 1981), perhaps apply to specimens of P. pyrrhorhachis or P. hirtirachis, which are two closely related and similar species.

About 25 species: tropical and subtropical Asia, east to the Pacific islands, to the west reaching to W Africa; 12 species (four endemic) in China.

(Authors: Lin Youxing (林尤兴); Alan R. Smith)