Karst vegetation is an important maintainer of the structural and functional stabilities of karst ecosystems. The structure, function, and management of karst vegetation have attracted considerable researchers’ attention. However, only few have reviewed the development process as well as research trends and hotspots in this field. We analyzed the annual publication volumes, citation frequency, authors, nations, institutions, periodicals, and keywords in the Web of Science (WoS) and CNKI databases from 1990 to 2017 by using bibliometric statistics and visualization methods. We summarized the research trends worldwide in the past 28 years and provided suggestions for future development. From 1990 to 2017, the WoS and CNKI databases included 457 and 1256 papers in this field, respectively. The publication volumes showed a fluctuating upward tendency, and the research in this field exhibited a rapid development after 2007. The literatures in WoS covered 60 countries, with China accounting for 50.33% of the total (ranking first in the world), followed by the United States and Slovenia. In addition, the top 10 authors of the publication volumes are all from China. Most institutions were also in China. This information fully demonstrates that Chinese scholars are very active in the study of karst vegetation ecology and are the global leaders of the frontier and development trends in this field. The journal analysis shows that Environmental Earth Sciences and Acta Ecologica Sinica are the main journal carriers of foreign and Chinese papers in this field, respectively. Karst, vegetation, and rocky desertification are the high-frequency keywords in the literatures. Thus, vegetation restoration in karst rocky desertification areas is the main research focus and core content in this field. To promote the development of karst vegetation ecology, scholars and institutions in China and abroad should strengthen cooperation to establish global monitoring network of karst vegetation. It is necessary to observe, compare, and analyze the dynamic process and mechanisms of ecological function evolution of karst vegetation in different regions or types for long terms. In addition, various methods, such as large-data gathering, remote sensing, field-controlled experiments, mathematical modeling, and phylogenetic analysis should be used to construct ecological theories, hypotheses or models suitable for vegetation patterns, processes and dynamics in karst habitats. Such cooperation and interdisciplinary approach would further reveal the scientific issues encountered under changing environments (climate, human disturbance, and other factors), such as the assembly process of karst plant communities, multi-scale patterns of plant diversity, and adaptive restoration of degraded vegetation.