Abstract: We investigated the distribution of clonal and non-clonal plants along the sandy hill-slope in Ordos Plateau, using the line intercept method and the point method. One-way ANOVA was used to compare the difference of species richness and importance of plants with different growth forms among communities along the sandy hill-slope. We used the regression analysis method to analyze the relation of species diversity to importance of clonal plants in the communities. Species richness of clonal plants was higher in the ridge summit and the mid-slope, while lower in the foot-slope. The same trends were found for non-clonal plants, their species richness in the ridge summit and mid-slope was higher than that in the foot slope. Variation of species richness of phalanx clonal plants was similar to that of non-clonal plants. Guerilla clonal plants were absent in the ridge summit and few in the mid-slope, while abundant in the foot-slope. The importance of clonal plants in the foot slope was higher than in the ridge summit and the mid-slope. The importance of non-clonal plants in the foot slope was lower than in the ridge summit and the mid-slope. The importance of clonal plants was higher than the non-clonal plants in the mid-slope and the foot slope, while there was no such a difference between them in the ridge summit. The importance of phalanx clonal plants in the ridge summit and the mid-slope was much higher than that in the foot slope. In contrast, the importance of guerilla clonal plants in foot slope was much higher than that in ridge summit and mid-slope. The importance of phalanx clonal plants was higher than that of guerilla clonal plants in both the ridge summit and the mid-slope, while in the foot slope, the importance of guerilla clonal plants was higher than that of phalanx clonal plants. In the ridge summit, the relations of community plant species diversity to importance of clonal plants, importance of non-clonal plants as well as importance of phalanx clonal plants were parabola. In the mid-slope, plant species diversity increased with increasing importance of non-clonal plants, while it decreased with increasing importance of clonal plants as well as importance of phalanx clonal plants. In the foot-slope, plant species diversity was positively correlated to the importance of non-clonal plants, and negatively correlated to the importance of clonal plants as well as importance of guerilla clonal plants. Our results confirmed that clonal growth in plants is adaptive in general under stressed conditions, and clonal plants are more important in stressful habitats. There are marked differences between phalanx and guerilla clonal plants in their optimal locations along the sandy hill-slope. Phalanx clonal plants are more abundant and more important in drier habitats. In contrast, guerilla clonal plants tend to be more abundant and more important in wetter habitat. This suggested that phalanx clonal plants seem to have strong ability to grow under stressed environments. In the community located in ridge summit, Shannon-Wiener index increase and then decrease with increasing importance of clonal plants. In mid-slope and foot-slope communities, Shannon-Wiener index decrease with increase importance of clonal plants owing to their strong spreading ability.