Abstract: The surface morphologies of flax fiber during retting of nature fermentation and enzyme-retting period were studied by scanning electron microscopy.The results showed that surface morphologies of flax fiber were not damaged obviously in those retting methods,and obvious differences of surface morphologies of final flax fibers obtained from nature fermentation retting and enzyme-retting were not observed.X-ray diffraction techniques were used to measure the degree of crystallinity and the orientation of flax fiber during retting.The findings showed that the crystallinity of flax fiber increased in a certain degree and the orientation had no significant change after both retting techniques.