As the first open-pit combined mining area with 100 million ton reserves, Pingshuo mining area has suffered from severe vegetation damage due to the intensive coal mining activities. Although vegetation reconstruction is the guarantee for the restoration and reconstruction of the ecosystem in mining areas, few studies have been carried out to explore the vegetation reconstruction characteristics and succession rules of reclaimed land in mining areas under long-term reclamation sequences. The time-space substitution method and descriptive statistical analysis method were employed to analyze the vegetation reconstruction characteristics of the reclaimed land under different reclamation years (i.e. 6, 7, 25 and 27 years), the results of which were further compared with those of the original landform. The results showed that:(1) the species richness of the reclaimed land was significantly improved relative to the the original landform during vegetation reconstruction processes, the evidence of which was that the species richness of arbors and shrubs in each reclaimed land was significantly higher than that of the original landform. However, instead of a monotonous increasing tendency, the species richness tended to increase and then decrease in the process of the vegetation succession. The Shannon-Wiener index of the reclaimed land reached the peak at the R-25 a plot (0.62), which was closely associated with the composition and growth habits of plant species, natural conditions (e.g. soil conditions and precipitation) and human interference. (2) Based on the growth status of arbors, Robinia pseudoacacia was the pioneer tree species and should be preferentially adopted for vegetation reconstruction. Most of herbs (77.78%) were perennial and the evidence from herbal importance value indicated that the herbaceous species mainly comprised Gramineae, Compositae and Leguminosae were the dominant families while Poa sphondylodes, Calamagrostis epigeios, Elymus dahuricus, Medicago sativa, and Roegneria kamoj were the obviously dominant species and preferentially considered herbs in land reclamation. (3) More than 89% of the total aboveground biomass of the reclaimed land was derived from the aboveground biomass of trees and shrubs, which tended to increase, then decrease and finally increase again, and gradually approached that of the original landform with the increase of reclamation years. The aboveground biomass of R-6a, R-7a, R-25a, and R-27a accounted for 27.55%, 52.44%, 36.55%, and 68.84% of the original landform (OL) plots, and the maximum value occurred at the R-27a plot (5.9710 kg/m²), which indicated that the vegetation growth status and reclamation effect were gradually getting better after the land reclamation practice. Therefore, the study on the vegetation reconstruction characteristics and succession rules of reclaimed land in different reclamation years can reflect the effect of land reclamation to a certain extent. It can also provide a reference for how to select suitable plant species and formulate a optimal vegetation configuration model when similar mining areas need vegetation reconstruction, which can improve the speed and effect of vegetation restoration on reclaimed land.