Abstract: Based on the data from plant communities’ investigation of 11 landfills at 7 districts of Shanghai city, the characteristic of vegetation in solid waste landfill was summarised, such as species composition, type of distribution area, community type and so on. The results showed that 189 seed plant species belonging to 165 genera and 77 families, which were mainly the herb plants, was recorded in 11 landfills. And the family with more than ten species was successively Compositae, Gramineae, Rosaceae and Leguminosae, and there were also many species from the family of Malvaceae, Labiatae and Chenopodiaceae, the family with one specie and native species had the highest ratio in landfills. The main components of the flora in landfills was successively the north temperate zone, pantropic and east asia. The main communities were herbaceous plant communities in early period of solid waste landfills. And the wood plants were mainly consist of artificial plantation species, and some pioneer species, such as Broussonetia papyrifera, Celtis sinensis, Morus alba, Melia azedarach. The main community types in landfill were evergreen coniferous forest, evergreen broad-leaved forest, mixed forest, deciduous broad-leaved forest, evergreen and deciduous broadleaved mixed forest, and the main community types were lack of shrub layer in common, the natural invasion wood plants had discontinuous distribution pattern. According to the vegetation characteristic and surrounding environment of different landfills,we suggested that landfill resources could be used for native plant landscape and urban “forest island” construction.