Plants terrestrial or epilithic. Rhizome creeping, branched, often producing slender stolon-like branches, set with roots, spaced stipe bases and scales, scales chartaceus, castaneus to ferrugineus, sessile, subulate, narrowly lanceolate, cordate to hastate, entire, repand or denticulate, apex terminates in a subulate cell. Fronds crowded or spaced, erect to arching, or pendent; stipe firm, atrocastaneus, nitid, terete, initially sparsely set with scales similar to those on the rhizome, glabrous later; lamina anadromous, ovate, broadly ovate or ovate-deltate, 3 to 5-pinnate, with up to 12 pinna pairs; rachis and lower order axes atrocastaneus, nitid, terete, glabrous, often somewhat flexuose; pinnae petiolate, alternate, basal pinnae largest, widely spaced, more closely spaced distally, spaced or overlapping, 2 to 4-pinnate, basal pinnae often basiscopically developed, inaequilaterally broadly ovate, ovate, ovate-deltate or narrowly elliptic, with up to 9 pinnule pairs; pinnules petiolate, alternate, spaced to overlapping, to 3-pinnate, ovate, broadly ovate, elliptic or narrowly elliptic, with up to 5 segment pairs; segments petiolate, alternate, thinly herbaceous, ovate to elliptic, with up to 3 ultimate segment pairs; ultimate segments petiolate, alternate, thinly herbaceous, flabellate, narrowly to broadly cuneate, variously lobed, lobes oblong-obtuse, dentate; glabrous adaxially and abaxially, articulated. Venation flabellately forked, ending in the margin in the teeth or in the sinuses between the teeth. Sori up to 7 per ultimate segment, borne along the outer margin of the segment lobes, on soral flaps which the veins enter, soral flaps suborbicular, reniform, lunate, or oblong; receptacle nude, or with 1- to 3-celled hairs which often produce a yellow farina; sporangia confined to the veins entering the soral flaps, sessile or short-stalked, stalk simple, 3-seriate below the capsule, capsule circular to obovate in lateral view, with (16-)16, 19 or 21(-22) indurated annulus cells, epistomium (3-)4 or 5(-5)-celled, hypostomium (3-)4 or 5(-6)-celled, stomium with 3 to 5 narrow cells of which the walls are conspicuously thickened; indusium a somewhat modified reflexed lobe margin, margin and adaxial surface often with capitate glands and 2 or 3-celled hairs, or glabrous. Spores tetrahedral-globose, trilete, rugate, rugulose or tuberculate, 25-50 (m in diameter. Chromosome number based on 2n = 58 or 60.