Description: Terrestrial or epiphytic plants, arising from an erect or short-creeping rhizome.
Fronds one or more per plant, erect or pendent, the common basal stalk relatively short; sterile lamina simple, undivided or irregularly forked towards the apex, veins reticulate.
Fertile part ('spike') simple, solitary and borne on a short to long stalk; sporangia large, in two rows, embedded in the axis, coalescent, dehiscing horizontally.
Distribution and occurrence: World: c. 30 species, widespread. Australia: c. 7 species, all States.
Text by Peter G. Wilson
Taxon concept:
| | Key to the species | |
| 1 | Fronds with demarcation between the sterile lamina and the common stalk clear-cut; sterile lamina not, or barely, fused to the fertile stalk; terrestrial plants (subgenus Ophioglossum) | 2 |
| Fronds with demarcation between the sterile lamina and the common stalk not clear, lamina grading into the common stalk; sterile lamina conspicuously fused to the fertile stalk (subgenus Ophioderma) | Ophioglossum pendulum |
| 2 | Stipe bases persistent and forming a brown, papery sheath | Ophioglossum polyphyllum |
| Stipe bases not persistent and sheathing; rhizome short, roots few, fleshy
Back to 1 | 3 |
| 3 | Sterile lamina membranous; primary reticulations readily visible, veins within the primary reticulations less conspicuous | Ophioglossum reticulatum |
| Sterile lamina fleshy, veins somewhat indistinct; veins within the primary reticulations equally conspicuous
Back to 2 | Ophioglossum lusitanicum |
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