Phenology is an important trait in plant life history, and also plays an important role in indicating changes in climate and natural environment, which has become one of the research hotspots in the field of global change. Conventional phenological studies assumed that phenology was determined by climate factors, such as temperature and precipitation, and focused more on the influence of climate factors on phenology from the perspective of interannual changes of plant phenology. However, the large differences between phenology of different species suggest that phenology is also related to species own biological characteristics, such as phylogeny and functional traits, but it remains unclear that how biological characteristics may affect phenology. In this study, based on the phenological observation data of 44 common woody plants from 1965 to 2018 in Beijing, we investigated how the phenological traits (multiyear mean phenology, temperature sensitivity, and heat requirement) of two spring phenophases (leaf unfolding date, first flowering date) correlated with the phylogeny and functional traits. Firstly, we tested the phylogenetic conservatism for phenological traits with the phylogenetic signal (Blomberg's K) and evolution models, and intuitively depicted the evolutionary process of phenological traits with phylogenetic signal representation (PSR) curves. Subsequently, we analyzed the relationships between phenological traits and functional traits using the generalized estimating equations to investigate the differences of the resource utilization and survival strategies of different species. The results showed that all phenological traits, with the exception of the temperature sensitivity of leaf unfolding date, corresponded to an evolutionary processes shaped by random genetic drift and selection, which suggested a phylogenetic conservatism for them, i.e. closely related species showed similar phenological traits. In addition, it could be deduced from the strength of phylogenetic signal that the reproductive phenology, e.g. first flowering date was more conservative than the leaf phenology, e.g. leaf unfolding date. We also found that the timing and heat requirements of leaf unfolding date were closely related to life forms that the shrubs showed an earlier leaf unfolding date and a lower heat requirement for leaf unfolding than the trees. The first flowering date was closely related to the pollination type that wind-pollinated species flowered much earlier than insect-pollinated species. The results of this study will contribute to a deeper understanding of the biological mechanism of phenological response to climate change, and are of great significance to enrich phenology theory. The conclusion of this study could also provide reference for further plant conservation research.