Plant functional traits can reflect the adaptation of plant species and their survival strategies to environment. Desert plants play an important role in maintaining the stability of desert ecosystems. Exploring the relationship between desert plant functional traits and their living environment is helpful to understand ecological strategies of plants to extreme drought, then provides a theoretical basis for the protection of desert ecosystem. However, there are many studies on vegetation and community dynamics in the Qaidam Basin, China, but there is still a lack of research on plant functional traits in this particular geographical area. Therefore, in this study, we toke the Qaidam Basin as the research area, selected 8 plant functional traits indexes, contained 10 desert plant species belong to 4 life forms, to explore the basic characteristics of plant functional traits and their relationship with environmental factors of desert plants from Qaidam Basin, China. Results showed that the value of leaf carbon content (LCC), leaf nitrogen content (LNC), leaf phosphorus content (LPC), leaf C:N, leaf N:P, leaf δ¹³C, leaf dry matter content (LDMC), and plant height of desert plants from Qaidam Basin were 272.07-466.00 mg/g, 12.40-44.50 mg/g, 0.51-2.07 mg/g, 8.62-29.74, 11.37-39.29, -27.38‰——14.80‰, 100-480 mg/g, 3.00-264.22 cm, respectively. There were no significant differences in the LNC, LPC, leaf N:P and LDMC among different life forms, but LCC, leaf C:N, leaf δ¹³C and plant height were significantly different. There were no significant differences between LNC, LPC, and leaf N:P in the Qaidam Basin compared with the global, Chinese and Tibetan regions, but existed significant differences compared with other vegetation types in China. Redundancy analysis (RDA) results showed that mean annual temperature (MAT) of climatic factors had a great influence on the functional traits of desert plants in the Qaidam Basin, China. The plant height, LDMC, LCC and leaf δ¹³C increased with the increase of MAT. With the increasing degree of drought in the climate, plant life forms from semi-shrubs to small trees, shrubs and other more drought-tolerant plant life forms. In the soil factors that affect plant functional traits, the content of sand grain and gravel had a great influence. The results reveal the importance of climate and soil physical properties to the survival of desert plants, and show that the adaptation strategy of desert plants in Qaidam Basin is slow investment-return type. There is niche differentiation among different desert plant life forms to adapt to different level of drought conditions.