We report here a facile chemical method to prepare ZnO nanorods with micrometer length in large quantity at 80 degrees C. The as-prepared rods exhibited blue emission and room temperature ferromagnetism simultaneously. The PL of the as-prepared ZnO rods exhibited an overlapped broad emission in the 345-600 nm range. The as-prepared dried rods exhibited a saturation magnetization value of 59.14 x 10(-3) emu g(-1) at room temperature. On heating, though the material retains its morphology, the magnetization value decreased. Since we have observed a reduction in the intensity of the visible emission followed by a disappearance of the ferromagnetic ordering, we attributed the blue emission and the ferromagnetism to the presence of defects related to singly ionized oxygen vacancies and zinc vacancies. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.