The feasibility of wood identification of softwood and hardwood by near infrared spectroscopy (NIR) coupled with partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) was investigated in the present paper. The near infrared spectra (780～2 500 nm) were collected from wood cross-section from one softwood species (Chinese fir) and one hardwood species (eucalyptus). The results show that: (1) The identification accuracy of the calibration samples predicted by the model based on NIR coupled the PLS-DA was 100%. The correlation coefficient between the NIR predicted category variable value and the true value was 0.990, and the SEC was 0.071; (2) The identification accuracy by the model based on the spectra with 780~1 100 nm wavelengths also was 100%, and the correlation coefficient and SEC were 0.990 and 0.070, respectively; (3) The identification accuracy for the test samples was 100%. It was suggested that NIR can be used to rapidly and accurately identify softwood and hardwood samples. It also provides a new approach to identifying wood species.