Abstract: Seedlings are an indispensable stage in the plant cycle life and are important in natural vegetation restoration. The objective of this paper was to explore seedling characteristics and their relationship with the standing vegetation under different erosion environments in the hill-gully Loess Plateau region. Three typical watersheds in different vegetation zones were selected, and One-Way ANOVA was used to analyze seedling densities, species diversity and the similarity between seedlings and the ground vegetation using quadrat surveys. In the seedling bank,there were 75 species belonging to 25 families, while in the ground vegetation there were 105 species belonging to 29 families. Most species were Compositae, Gramineae and Leguminoseae composited. while Xerophytic and Mesoxerphytic were the main water ecotypes, and perennial herbs were the dominant life-form. Seedling densities and diversity were different in different erosion environments. They were greater in the forest-grassland and grassland zones than in the forest zone. In the same vegetation belt, seedling densities in the Dongzigou watershed was in the order mao top>shady slope>sun slope, while diversity was in the order liang/mao slope>gully slope. In the Gaojiagou watershed, there was no significant difference in seedling density or diversity. In the Zhangjiahe watershed, seedling densities were bigger and species were richer on shady slopes, especially on shady gully slopes. Different erosion environments had no significant effect on the similarity between seedlings and the standing vegetation. The Sorensen similarity index of herbs in the 3 watersheds was less than 0.5, showing smaller similarity. Therefore, the site conditions in the hill-gully Loess Plateau region are poor, and the seedlings cannot survive and establish easily.