Abstract: The patterns of effective pollen dispersal were explored in an experimental population of Liriodendron L. Paternities of 180 open-pollination progenies from 3 maternal trees were identified by twelve nuclear SSR polymorphic loci from expressed sequence tags of Liriodendron A software, CERVUS, was used to assign the paternity of each progeny based on the method of maximum likelihood analysis. The number of alleles per locus ranged from 3 to 7, with average of 4.67. The observed and expected heterozygosities (Ho and He) ranged from 0.263 to 0.680 and from 0.476 to 0.748, with averages of 0.458 and 0.635, respectively. The polymorphic information content (PIC) ranged from 0.428 to 0.704, with average of 0.580. The cumulative exclusion probability of 12 SSR loci was 98.52%. Among 180 progenies, 114 (accounting for 63.3%) progenies could be assigned paternity at strict confidence level of 95%, the remained 66 (accounting for 36.7%) progenies could also be assigned paternity at relaxed confidence level (80%). The selfing rate of open-pollinated L. chinense Sarg. was 11.6%, while the selfing rate of L. tulipifera L. was zero. It seems that intraspecies mating occurred more frequently than interspecies mating in Liriodendron. The average effective pollen dispersal distance of Liriodendron ranged from 20 m to 30 m, with the maximum dispersal distance of 70 m.