Class
Marattiopsida is a group of
ferns containing a single order,
Marattiales, and family,
Marattiaceae. Class Marattiopsida diverged from other ferns very early in their evolutionary history and are quite different from many plants familiar to people in
temperate zones. Many of them have massive, fleshy rootstocks and the largest known
fronds of any fern. The Marattiaceae is one of two groups of ferns traditionally known as
eusporangiate fern, meaning that the
sporangium is formed from a group of cells vs the leptosporangium in which there is a single initial cell. There have long been four traditional extant genera (
Angiopteris,
Christensenia,
Danaea and
Marattia), but recent genetic/cladistic analysis has determined the genus
Marattia to be paraphyletic, and the genus has been split into three genera, the two new ones being
Eupodium and
Ptisana. This fern group has a long fossil history with many extinct taxa (
Psaronius,
Asterotheca,
Scolecopteris,
Eoangiopteris,
Qasimia,
Marantoidea,
Danaeites,
Marattiopsis, etc.).