Plant interspecific associations, which are significant quantitative and structural characteristics, are crucial for the formation and evolution of plant communities. Studying interspecific associations provides vital theoretical and practical avenues for understanding the stabilization and succession of plant communities, and for their restoration and reconstruction. To understand the formation mechanisms underlying interspecific associations, the methods commonly used to analyze the factors influencing plant interspecific associations were reviewed; then, the main problems with recent studies were discussed. Five aspects of interspecific associations were reviewed: facilitation, invasion, identifying species groups, different stages of succession, and different patterns of scale. Commonly used analytical methods, which involve calculations based on the number of individuals found in a set of plots, include the covered variate ratio, x² test, Fisher exact test, Pearson correlation coefficient, Spearman rank correlation coefficient, association coefficients, matching coefficients (Jaccard, Dice, and Ochiai coefficients), point correlation coefficients, and coupling values. However, interspecific associations are affected by multiple factors, including artificial sampling scales, environmental factors, and biological factors. Organismal properties affect interspecific association, which can in turn affect competition, allelopathy, and responses to environmental events (e.g., insect plagues and extreme weather). However, current approaches to analyzing interspecific associations have the following limitations: (1) measurement-based results are greatly influenced by the size and number of the plots used; (2) these methods can only be used to measure the relationship between two species in a community; and (3) interspecific association analyses describe the external correlations between species and reveal either the results of interspecific competition or the current state of the community, but not the processes that drive these patterns. Therefore, further research is needed to address these issues. First, niche theory could be used to study an interspecific association and reveal the correlation between two species. Second, changes in interspecific association caused by density could be studied, and the relationship between habitat heterogeneity and interspecific association analyzed. Third, the physiology and molecular genetics of interspecific association could be studied to explore the mechanisms by which these associations are formed. This review emphasizes that multi-scale ordination could be used to analyze complicated interspecific associations at different patterns of scale, for plant facilitation and invasion in particular. In such an analysis, the Fisher exact test combined with the Pearson correlation and Spearman rank correlation coefficients could be used to investigate variations in interspecific associations dominated by density due to plant physiology, molecular genetics, or ecological niche. This approach could more accurately and reliably reveal the dynamics of interspecific associations between plant species.