Abstract: Miscanthus germplasm resources are fundamental to breed its new varieties better suitable for being utilized as energy crop. In order to screen the effective microsatellite molecular markers prior to the relevant genetic analysis for Miscanthus, we studied the transferability of 382 maize SSR primer pairs and 100 sugarcane EST-SSR primers pairs using the accessions from all the 7 species of Miscanthus in China. The screening included two sections, which were preliminary screening to obtain those primer pairs which were preliminarily considered to be effective, and the PCR amplification for all 84 accessions using these primer pairs. The number of 39 (10.21%) maize SSR primer pairs and 13 (13.00%) sugarcane EST-SSR primer pairs were obtained through screening, respectively, whose amplification bands were reproducible, strong and polymorphic, and could be exactly scored across all 84 accessions. A total of 250 amplification bands were produced by the 52 primer pairs, of which 220 bands were produced in Miscanthus. Of the 220 bands, 206 (93.64%) were polymorphic with an average of 3.96, and some of them were specific, which were only possessed by some taxon or taxa in the genus. The genetic similarity (GS) ranged from 0.588 to 0.988 based on the all 250 amplification bands. UPGMA clustering analysis showed that Miscanthus in China was divided into two groups on the level of GS=0.68. The former contained Miscanthus nepalensis, M. nudipes, and M. paniculatus, and the latter comprised of M. sinensis, M. floridulus, M. sacchariflorus, and M. lutarioriparius. On the level of GS=0.82, M. sinensis and M. floridulus constituted one subgroup, and M. sacchariflorus and M. lutarioriparius constituted another subgroup. On the level of GS=0.88, M. sinensis and M. floridulus were separated with each other. The results preliminarily showed that there was rich genetic diversity among all the taxa of Miscanthus in China. The genetic similarity among M. sinensis, M. floridulus, M. sacchariflorus, and M. lutarioriparius ranged from 0.780 to 0.988, which indicated there were small genetic distances among them. However, there were relatively long genetic distances between the group consisting of M. nepalensis, M. nudipes, and M. paniculatus, and the other group comprised of M. sinensis, M. floridulus, M. sacchariflorus, and M. lutarioriparius, which implied that M. nepalensis, M. nudipes, and M. paniculatus should be given appropriate consideration when selecting parents in the course of genetic improvement and breeding of Miscanthus from China in order to broaden the genetic basis of varieties.