The plant functional traits and environmental factors is great significance for understanding the formation of plant community and its adaptation mechanism under different environmental gradients. Therefore, in this study, the Potentilla fruticosa shrub meadows was taken as the research object, and we analyzed the variation trends and interrelationships between the leaf functional traits of herbaceous plants and soil factors in different coverage gradients of P. fruticosa shrub plaques (coverage in shrub plaques was 0%, 30%, 60% and 90%) under the influence of grazing. Our research indicates that: (1) there were significant differences and different variation trends among soil bulk density (BD), soil pH, and soil nutrients under different coverage gradients of P. fruticosa shrub. And P. fruticosa shrub in the study area has obvious “Fertile Island effect”. (2) With the increase of P. fruticosa shrub overage, the specific leaf area (SLA) increased significantly, and leaf thickness (LT) and leaf phosphorus content (LPC) decreased significantly (P <0.05). The difference of LPC may be related to the element content of different species in the community. (3) SLA is negatively correlated with leaf dry matter content (LDMC) and LT to varying degrees, and is extremely significantly negatively related to leaf nitrogen and phosphorus content (LNC, LPC) (P <0.01), and significantly positively correlated with leaf carbon content (LCC) (P<0.01). (4) RDA redundancy analysis showed that the average explanatory variable of soil factors to leaf functional traits variation was 72.25%, and the dominant factors affecting plant functional traits were soil organic matter (SOM), soil total nitrogen (TN), soil available nitrogen (AN), and soil available potassium (AK) and soil bulk density (BD). However, with different cover distributions of P. fruticosa shrub, the dominant factors affecting plant leaf traits are different in different communities. Communities with 0% and 30% coverage of P. fruticosa shrubs were more affected by SOM, TN, and AN, while the communities with 60% and 90% of P. fruticosa shrubs were more affected by AK and BD.