Abstract: Orchardgrass (Dactylis glomerata) is a perennial, cool-season, and high-quality forage grass well known and widely used throughout the world, and it plays an important role in grassland animal husbandry and the development of ecologically sound rangeland management in China. This study collected and performed multivariate analysis of data on rust tolerance, summer survival, herbage accumulation rate, herbage yield, stem:leaf ratio, dry-fresh ratio, tillers, leaf length and other plant phenotypic characters, leaf appearance interval, and distinctness, uniformity and stability (DUS) among 8 cultivars and 1 breeding line of D. glomerata in China in order to investigate the phenotypic polymorphism and variation patterns of D. glomerata germplasm in China. Obvious differences in phenology, rust tolerance, summer survival, herbage accumulation, and herbage production among the D. glomerata cultivars were observed and the new breeding line 02-116 performed well. The differences between cultivars in 12 phenotypic traits were highly significant (P＜0.01), and the coefficients of variation ranged from 21.64% (second leaf length) to 106.20% (distance between flag leaf and inflorescence). The phenotypic traits of distance between flag leaf and inflorescence, plant height, length of upper internode, second leaf width and crown diameter were significantly correlated with herbage yield of D. glomerata. Principal component analysis showed the cumulative contribution of leaf length, leaf width, plant height, and distance between flag leaf and inflorescence accounted for 68.225% of data variation, and these factors determined plant morphology dynamics herbage accumulation. 7 DUS characteristics differed among cultivars to varying degrees. The breeding line 02-116 and cultivars Chuandong and Gulin showed marked differences in plant phenology.