Abstract: Plant phenology has always been a hotspot and frontier research in plant evolutionary biology, plant ecology, and climate change ecology, as it is closely associated with plant adaption and evolution, interspecies relationship, and ecosystem structure and functions, and it is greatly sensitive to climate change. Here, we review the main progresses and problems about the responses of the staring date and duration of phenological sequences to climate change based on three levels (i.e., individual, population, and community) with seven phenological sequences (i.e., onset of green-up, first budding-set, first flowering, first fruiting-set, nutrition after fruiting-set, first coloring, and complete coloring). We further proposed some scientific questions and prospects to promote the development of plant phenological studies in China.

Key words: Climate change, grassland plant, phenological hierarchy, phenological sequence