Vegetation is an important feature of a fully functioning river ecosystem. The KH vortex, a special coherent structure generated in submerged vegetated flows, has direct influence on the flow-sediment-contaminant transport. Advances in related issues on KH vortex in vegetated turbulent flows were reviewed from the aspects of the discovery, the formation conditions, the parameter characteristics of the geometrical form and the period of KH vortices. The main effects of vegetation density and submergence on KH vortices were summarized. It is suggested that the key issues to be further explored should be focused on the critical conditions for the KH vortex formation such as the critical density or the submergence, the development progress along the streamwise direction and the specific influence of the factors(such as density, rigidity and geometry of vegetation, submergence and flow intensity)by coupling the turbulence instability theory, spectrum analysis, flow visualization and image technique.