The genetic diversity and genetic structure of five natural populations of the island and coastal endangered plant Elaeagnus macrophylla were analyzed by conserved DNAderived polymorphism (CDDP) molecular markers. A total of 289 discernible loci were obtained from 102 individuals using fifteen primers, and 100% of the loci were polymorphic. The observed number of alleles (Na) was 1.9654, the effective number of alleles (Ne) was 1.2604, the average of Nei's genetic diversity index (H) was 0.1724, and Shannon's information index was 0.2869, indicating that E. macrophylla had levels of genetic diversity lower than those reported for continental relatives and other coastal species. The average percentage of polymorphic loci (PPL) was 42.1%, and the maximum and minimum PPL values were 80.97% and 14.88%, belonging to the Nanji Island (NJD) and Liugong Island (LGD) populations, respectively. Populations of E. macrophylla were highly differentiated (Gst=0.3263). The unweighted pair group method with arithmetic mean (UPGMA) clustering results revealed 5 groups: one group comprising the Liugong Island (LGD) and Da Rushan (DRS) populations, one comprising the Lingshan Island (LSD), Laoshan (LS) and Daguan Island (DGD) populations, one comprising the Putuo Island (PTD), and two groups representing the Nanji Island (NJD) samples, which were differentiated into a northwestern group and a southeastern group. There was no cross-clustering among the samples, and the similarity of the relatives was strictly related to geographical location. R software analysis showed no correlation between genetic distance and geographic distance between populations (r = 0.256579, p = 0.8309).