Woodwardia areolata is most abundant on the coastal plain of the eastern United States, scattered in the Ouachita and Boston mountains, Ozark and Cumberland plateaus, and the Piedmont, but not in the high Appalachians, the heavy gumbo soils of the Mississippi Valley, or the limestone regions of the Interior Low Plateaus. It apparently has been extirpated in Maine where it is known only from specimens collected in the 1860s. 

 Features such as extreme leaf dimorphism, sunken sori, and expanded persistent indusia set Woodwardia areolata apart from all others in the genus. The existence of closely related transitional species in Asia, however, makes generic segregation uncertain. Those who wish to recognize a monotypic generic segregate based on Woodwardia areolata must coin a new name because Lorinseria C. Presl (1849) is an orthographic variant of Lorinsera Opiz (1839). For a detailed discussion of the ecology and geography of this species, see R. Cranfill (1983). Sterile specimens of this species are sometimes confused with Onoclea sensibilis .