Adventitious rooting is a complicated organogenesis process involving perception of external signals and cascade coupling of internal and external signals. It has been one of the hot spots in the botany field. This review introduced the events of induction phase, initiation phase and expression phase during the development of adventitious root, and summarized signaling pathways, gene expression, cellular and metabolic characteristics in each developmental phase. This paper will provide theoretical foundation for further researches on adventitious rooting.