Strontium carbonate (SrCO3) owning an urchin-like morphology with a hierarchical nanostructure was synthesized by the reactants of strontium nitrate and urea via a facilitative, green initiative hydrothermal route. Samples characterization results of the structure showed that the surface of urchin-like SrCO3 was evenly distributed with nanorods with a diameter of about 50 nm and lengths of 1-2 mu m. It was also found that the hydrothermal reaction time and reactants of trace concentrations changes will have an impact on the size and morphology. For these reasons we presented the crystal growth mechanism of "nuclear aggregates-nanorods embellishment-urchin-like" during the process of fabricating urchin-like SrCO3 crystal. Specific capacitance was enhanced more than 6 times, which dug out the optimal urchin-like SrCO3 influenced by a growth of surface nanorods. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.