| General Information |
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| Distribution | A genus of about 70 species distributed throughout the world especially in the tropical and warm temperate parts of the Old World.
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Habit
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Terrestrial. Rhizomes long-creeping to erect, scaly; scales entire, basifixed, these often with multicellular hair-like projections.
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Leaves
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Fronds crowded to widely spaced, small to large; stipe slender to stout, stramineous to medium brown with darker base, adaxially sulcate, basally winged and then often bearing pneumathodes, or unwinged, often hairy and/or scaly with light brown to black, acuminate, entire, basifixed scales; blade triangular to oblong-lanceolate, base truncate, pinnatifid-pinnate to bipinnate-pinnatifid or quadripinnatifid, texture thin, herbaceous, often brittle, rachis adaxially sulcate, the groove at the junction of secondary rachises interrupted, not joining those of the pinnae axes or costae, rachis and main veins bearing scales and multicellular septate hairs; pinnae and pinnules equal-sided at base or acroscopic base of lower pinnae often more or less auricled; veins free, forked or pinnate.
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Sori
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Sori linear to oblong or sometimes orbicular, often U- or J-shaped, dorsal or exceptionally terminal, indusiate; indusium laterally attached often at a vein fork, single or often in pairs, membranous or thick, entire or toothed, sometimes glandular.
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Spores
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Spores bilateral, ellipsoidal to subspheroidal, perispore with diffuse echinae projecting from an appressed reticulum.
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Chromosomes
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x = 40, 41.
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Notes
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From the Greek depas, cup or bowl, alluding to the marginal cup-shaped sori of the first described species of the genus, D. prolifera. The genus was formerly included in Woodsiaceae.
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Contributor
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David Lorence, co-author K. R. Wood
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