Plants in arid environments tend to have large, deep root systems, so plants living in different environments may have different root morphology. How many types of plant roots exist in the grassland? To answer this question, root morphology of each plant species should be observed, and then summarized. However, very limited data considering root distribution of each grassland species is available due to methods limitation. In this study, 430 plant species (including 542 observations) were selected. The study found that the majority of plant roots in grassland of northern China can be divided into six types: rhizome-rooted plant, fasciculate rooted plants, creeping rooted plants, fibrous rooted plants, tap-rooted plants, the bulb-corm- tuber rooted type. Based on the root types, the average root depth is 63.84 +/- 5.96 cm for tap rooted, 49.89 +/- 7.06 cm for creeping rooted, 32.03 +/- 4.29 cm for fasciculate rooted, 23.72 +/- 2.77 cm for rhizome rooted, 20.38 +/- 3.83 cm for fibrous rooted, 15.79 +/- 2.02 cm for bulb-corm-tuber rooted plants. The unilateral root spread is 44.58 +/- 9.26 cm for tap rooted, 43.12 +/- 7.64 cm for creeping rooted, 23.82 +/- 2.79 cm for rhizome rooted, 21.00 +/- 2.93 cm for fasciculate rooted, 13.86 +/- 2.64 cm for fibrous rooted, 12.64 +/- 2.44 cm for bulb-corm-tuber rooted plants. It was found that plants with deeper tap root and longer lateral roots are mainly distributed in sandy and desert habitats. Plants with shallow tap roots and short lateral roots are mainly distributed in humid meadows, marsh soil and meadow soil. In humid regions, some plants were found to have a very large root system and at the same time large aboveground biomass.