Abstract: The hazards of heavy metal contaminated soils have become increasingly common and serious. The traditional physical and chemical remediation methods are high cost with serious environmental disturbances. Using plants to absorb energy from the sun to repair the heavy metal contaminated soils is a promising technique. This paper reviews the researches on heavy metal contaminated soils by phytoremediation to know the application status and progress in this field. Plants used in phytoremediation, the cumulative effects, different functions of their parts on heavy metals, influence factors, repair efficiency are introduced. Due to limited researches on plant treatment, phytoremediation needs more explorations and researches. Though phytoremediation has its unique advantages, including low cost and friendly to soil ecological system, it has some weaknesses.