Abstract: Aquatic plants in natural rivers have important effects on turbulence structure. In the presence of vegetation, river flows become more intensely mixed and their turbulent structures are more complicated. Many studies have been conducted recently to examine turbulence characteristics of vegetated open channel flows, which directly affect the transport of sediment, pollutants and nutrients. This work provides a review of the previous studies in the context of time-average turbulent characteristics, coherent structure, flow regime and relevant factors that influence the turbulence structure in vegetated flows. It is suggested that a combined analysis of field and point information is applied to quantitatively describe the formation and development process of coherent structure, and to explore the turbulence mechanism of vegetated flows for the further study.