Hypolepis Bernh.

Ground Ferns

8 species native AUST.; all states and territories except N.T.

Terrestrial ferns often forming extensive colonies. Rhizome slender, solenostelic, long-creeping, clothed with simple brown or reddish hairs. Stipes not articulated to the rhizome, clothed with hairs which are sometimes glandular-tipped or viscid. Lamina bipinnate to decompound; the apex characterized by intermittent growth, often clothed with short glandular-tipped or strigose hairs, sometimes glabrous, herbaceous, uniform. Veins free. Sori orbicular, usually terminal on the veinlets, never confluent, either marginal and indusiate or intramarginal and exindusiate, borne on punctiform receptacles. Indusium sometimes absent, mostly a small, modified, reflexed lobule of the margin, usually protected but never bearing the young sori, later often turned back. Sporangia with an annulus including 13–15 thick-walled cells; pedicel 2 rows of cells, long, narrow. Spores bilateral, monolete, without a perispore, mostly spinulose or tuberculate, rarely smooth.