Name honors Wilhelm Friedrich von Gleichen (1717-1783), a German botanist and microscopist.

Plants medium-sized to large, terrestrial, often forming extensive, tangled mats. Rhizomes long-creeping. Fronds scrambling or climbing. Blades 1-pinnate-pinnatisect, repeatedly indeterminately branching, with dormant buds at forks; or lamina 2-pinnate-pinnatisect, rachises unbranched, rachises with periodically dormant buds between last pinnae. Stipes invested with linear-triangular scales, ciliate scales, hairlike scales, and hairs. Ultimate segments adnate, coriaceous. Veins free, 1-to 6-forked. Sori exindusiate, round. Sporangia few to very few in sori.

A tropical, subtropical, sometimes temperate family of about 120 species of primitive ferns in four genera. Represented in Hawai 'i by three genera (two with one indigenous species each, and one with a single endemic species).