Polypodium L.

Plants on rock, occasionally terrestrial or epiphytic. Stems creeping, usually branched, 3--15 mm diam., sometimes whitish pruinose; scales concolored to bicolored, lanceolate to ovate-acuminate, not clathrate to strongly clathrate, glabrous, margins entire to denticulate. Leaves monomorphic, closely spaced to distant, not conspicuously narrowed at tip, to 90 cm. Petiole articulate to stem, straw-colored, somewhat flattened or grooved to nearly terete, winged distally. Blade broadly ovate to deltate, pinnatifid to 1-pinnate at base, not pectinate, usually with fewer than 25 pairs of pinnae, not glaucous or conspicuously scaly; rachis sparsely scaly to glabrescent abaxially, puberulent to glabrous adaxially; scales ovate-lanceolate to linear, not peltate or clathrate. Segments linear to oblong; margins entire to serrate; apex rounded to attenuate. Venation free to anastomosing, if strongly anastomosing, then never with more than 1 included veinlet in fertile areoles. Sori often confined to distal region of leaf, discrete, circular to oval when immature, borne at tips of single veins, in 1--3 rows on either side of midrib; indument absent or of modified sporangia (sporangiasters), often bearing glandular hairs on bulbous head. Spores monolete, rugose to tuberculate. x = 37.