Tmesipteris Bernh.

7 species native AUST.; Qld, N.S.W., Vic., Tas.

The Australian species are small epiphytes growing on tree fern trunks especially on Todea and Dicksonia and occasionally on rocks. Rhizome long creeping, hairy. Lower portions of stems bearing a number of small, stiff, linear to narrowly lanceolate scale-leaves. Aerial axes pendulous, 1-pinnate, rarely the rhachis once forked. Sterile and fertile appendages occurring in irregular zones along the rhachis. Sterile lateral appendages green, subsessile, glabrous, simple, 1-veined, 4–31 mm long, 1–9 mm broad, obliquely very narrowly oblong to narrowly oblong, obliquely narrowly oblanceolate to lanceolate or elliptic. Fertile appendages green, with a comparatively long petiolule, bipartite almost to the base, bearing a single synangium just below the bifurcation; the lobes narrower than the sterile appendages. Synangia brownish, spindle-shaped, capsule-like, bivalvate with rounded or pointed ends, dehiscing longitudinally and around the middle. Spores bilateral.