Marattia is a mostly neotropical genus of eight species, but one species (M. douglassii) occurs on Hawaii. They usually occur in mountainous areas above 900 m elevations, but they may occur at lower elevation on islands.

Murdock (2008) showed that Marattia in its traditional sense is widely polyphyletic. The name can only be kept in its traditional sense if all Angiopteris and Christensenia would be merged into Marattia, leaving the family with just 2 genera (Marattia and Danaea). This scenario is very unwarranted, because Angiopteris is a morphologically well-established genus and differs from Marattia in many obvious characters. To retain Angiopteris and Christensenia, Marattia was therefore segregated into three genera Eupodium, Ptisana and Marattia. The true Marattia occur in the Neotropics and Hawaii, Eupodium is only Neotropical and all the old world species are transferred into the new genus Ptisana.