Vegetation restoration can stimulate changes in soil properties and root traits, which then cause change in rill erosion process (indicated by rill erodibility ( Kr) as well as critical shear stress ( τ_c)). The present work chose eight typical herbaceous plants, commonly appeared at diverse vegetation succession period on the Chinese Loess Plateau, for discovering how soil properties and root traits affected rill erosion. In total, we collected 240 undisturbed soil samples for flow scouring within the hydraulic flume in the presence of six shear stresses (range, 5.94-18.58 Pa). According to our findings, Kr and τ_c were 0.015-0.411 s m ^-1 and 0.050-6.059 pa among eight typical species. Cultivated species have high Kr and low τ_c, the Kr was 4.70 to 24.28 times greater than other species, and τ_c was 89.23% to 98.30% less than other species. In addition, plants that had the tap root system had a 4.80-fold increased Kr value compared with those that had the fibrous root system, and τ_c was 49.78% less than those with fibrous root system. The Kr and τ_c were affected by root-soil complex, with interaction effects of root and soil being 54.2% and 50.4%, respectively. The Kr decreased with bulk density, soil cohesion, soil organic matter and soil aggregate as power functions, and decreased with root surface area density and root length density being exponential functions. The τ_c increased with specific root length and bulk density as power functions. Of those above-mentioned soil properties and root traits, Kr was dominantly affected by cohesion and root surface area density, and τ_c was affected by bulk density and specific root length. Kr was simulated through soil cohesion ( Coh) and root surface area density ( RSAD), and τ_c were simulated by soil bulk density ( BD) and specific root length ( SRL) as power functions. Our constructed model achieved satisfactory performance.