Abstract:River corridors are important habitats for spontaneous plants in cities. Revealing the diversity characteristics and causes of spontaneous plants in different grades of rivers can help improve the urban vegetation research system and guide the low-maintenance and sustainable landscape creation of river corridors. This study adopted the typical plot sampling method to conduct a comprehensive investigation of 330 plots in the sample sections of the Ganjiang River (mainstream) and Wusha River (tributary) from March to November 2023. A total of 240 species of spontaneous plants were recorded, belonging to 49 families and 169 genera, with herbaceous plants being the majority. The results showed that there were differences in the number of high-frequency species and their life form composition between the two river sections, with more high-frequency plants in the tributary than in the mainstream. Seasonal dynamics dominated the community pattern, forming a continuous distribution of single dominant groups in spring and autumn and a fragmented distribution of double groups in summer. Among different riverbank gradients, except for the Margalef richness index of the tributary showing the characteristic of municipal road side>water side, the other α-diversity indices all presented a spatial difference feature of lower section>upper section>middle section>water side>municipal road side. The Shannon-Wiener diversity index and Pielou evenness index showed significant differences under extreme and mild disturbances. The diversity of spontaneous plants in urban riverbanks is the result of the combined effect of riverbank environmental heterogeneity and human disturbance gradients. Therefore, ecological protection and restoration should maintain the longitudinal riverbank gradient from water side to road side, respect the seasonal dynamics of communities, and implement management methods based on disturbance grading, that is, protect mild disturbances, utilize moderate disturbances, and guide intense disturbances. Therefore, applying the dominant native plants of each gradient as landscape resources can promote the coordinated development of ecological restoration, low-maintenance management, and characteristic landscape creation of river corridors.