Abstract: Dryoathyrium is a small genus of the Athyriaceae, it was frist founded by Ching in 1941, but some pteridologists (such as Tard.-Blot 1958, Tagawa 1959, S. Kurata 1961, Copeland 1974 and others) did not agree with Ching's treating (as a distinct genus). On the other hand, in 1958, Holttum also basing on the same species founded the genus Parathyrium, which was obviously synonym of Dryoathyrium. It occured ainly because of the world war Ⅱ and the turmoil after the war which hindered the science and culture exchange of the world. The rich materials studied by auther recently prove that Dryoathyrium can be a distinct genus, acording to both the morphological characteristics and geographical distribution. Drgoathyrium contains about 20 species in the whole world.13 species have been known in China so far. Drgoathyrium is mainly distributed in temperate and subtro^Ξ pical zones of eastern hemisphere. But most of them mainly distribute in China. The present paper gives a description of the genus, a key to the species of China and a summary account of distributioncon dition of the species in China.