Name honors August Wilhelm Dennstaedt (1776--1826), a German botanist.
Plants medium-sized to large (rarely small), terrestrial. Rhizomes short-or long-creeping, bearing hairs, scales absent. Fronds often large, rarely small. Stipes close or remote. Blades 1-to 5-pinnate, hairy or glabrous, lacking scales. Veins free, ending in bulbous expansions short of margins. Sari terminal on vein tips or on marginal connecting veins, round or elongate, marginal or submarginal. Indusia cup-shaped and submarginal, or marginal and linear covered by false indusia produced by a revolute margin, sometimes with true inner indusia, or sori naked, sometimes partially covered by recurved projection of segment lobes.
A mostly tropical family of about twelve genera. Represented in Hawai 'i by three genera.