In order to explore the biogas production characteristics of lignocellulosic feedstock, some typical materials including maize straw, rice straw, cotton straw, rape straw, herbal residue, bagasse and papermaking residue were chosen as substrates to analyze the effect of retting time, initial pH value and inoculation rate on their biogas productions. And the biogas production potential difference between mesophilic (（35±2）℃) and thermophilic fermentation (（53±2）℃) was compared as well. The results indicated that cotton straw and bagasse could not be started successfully to produce biogas without retting, but could obtain the highest biogas production after 7 d retting operation. And rape straw could be fermented successfully and even gain the highest biogas production without any retting. Among all the raw materials, rice straw could gain the largest biogas production under the mesophilic fermentation condition (352.56 mL/g). And its biogas yield could only be increased by 20.92% when the fermentation status was changed from mesophilic to thermophilic condition, which meant that mesophilic fermentation might be suitable for rice straw. Under the thermophilic fermentation condition, the silage maize straw could gain the highest biogas yield (480.00 mL/g), which was 82.49% higher than the mesophilic fermentation. So the thermophilic fermentation might be perfect for silage maize straw. In addition, the biogas production could also be increased gigantically for herbal and papermaking residues when the thermophilic fermentation condition was adopted.