Name honors Samuel Doody (1656-1706), keeper of the Chelsea Physic Garden, London, and one of the first Englishmen to collect and study ferns scientifically.

Plants small to medium-sized, terrestrial. Rhizomes erect or decumbent. Fronds clustered on rhizome tips, spreading at an angle from rhizomes to form a rosette. Stipes and rachises dark brown to black, with many dark, narrow scales. Blades 1-pinnate proximally, deeply pinnatifid distally, lanceolate. Pinnae adnate to very short-stalked, linear-lanceolate to falcate, curving toward tips of fronds, margins crenulate, tips acute. Veins forked, forming 1-3 layers of arched pericostal anastomoses enclosing areoles. Sori intermittent or contiguous, 1-3 rows, short, oblong or slightly curved, on cross-veinlets near midrib in 1 or more rows parallel to midrib. Indusia membranous, opening inward.

A genus of about twelve poorly defined species ranging from Australia, New Zealand, and islands of the Pacific east to Hawai 'i and Easter Island, with a few rare species in Sri Lanka and Malesia.

Represented in Hawai 'i by two endemic species.