Plants small to medium-sized, epiphytic or terrestrial. Rhizomes creeping, bearing small, narrow, reddish or dark scales. Stipes close or remote, usually with sparse scales at bases. Blades linear to linear-lanceolate. Pinnae dimidiate with free veins, glabrous, or not dimidiate with reticulate veins. Sori marginal on ends of free veins, short if at tips of 1 or a few veins, or linear along margins on anastomosing marginal commissural veins. Indusia membranous, attached at bases, opening toward margins.

A pantropical genus of about 150 species extending into temperate areas in southern Brazil, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan. Represented in Hawai'i by one naturalized species and one endemic variety of an indigenous species.

KEY TO THE NATIVE AND NATURALIZED LINDSAEA SPECIES IN HAWAI'I

1. Pinnae not dimidiate; 2-5(-7) pinna pairs; veins reticulate; sori linear, up to several cm long, extending along nearly entire length of both margins of pinnae . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1. L. ensifolia

1. Pinnae dimidiate; usually more than 30 pinna pairs; veins free and forking; sori less than 1 mm long, separated, on distal margins of pinnae only . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2. L. repens var. macraeana