Plant functional traits are an important research field in ecology, not only reflect the plant’s adaption and response to the living environment, but also significantly affect the ecosystem function. In this paper, CiteSpace software was utilized to summarize the research achievements of plant functional traits, to analyze the current situation of international research, to excavate its intellectual basis and sum up research hotspot as well as growing trends. We found that: (1) the number of papers published of plant functional traits in international has experienced four development stages, which was slow growth, fluctuate growth, steady growth, and swift growth. (2) The study of plant functional traits was divided into groping stage, developing stage, stationary stage, and expansive stage. There were key literatures to lead development at each stage. Furthermore, every stage had different research hotspots. While the current research focuses on “leaf traits”, “economic spectrum”, “plant functional diversity” and “traits niche”. (3) The plant functional traits research has evolved from large-scale, single habitat and single trait, to small-scale, multiple habitats, and multiple traits. (4) The countries with the greatest contribution to this field were America, German, France and China. The Chinese Acad Sci ranked first in the number of publications. The scientists who laid the foundation for the study of plant functional traits were Sandra Lavorel, Peter B Reich, Johannes H C Cornelissen, etc. (5) In the future, advancing technology and methods should be used in plant’s different organs and phylogenetic information to study changes of plant functional traits in different spatial and temporal scales.