Pot experiments using the soil(available Cd mass fractions were 17.40 and 51.50 mg/kg, respectively) treated by different levels of cadmium(40, 80 mg/kg) were set to study the effects of different levels of Cd on the emergence rate, plant height, stem diameter, leaf number, biomass and Cd content in different organs of flax. The results showed that compared with the control, a low level of Cd(40 mg/kg) increased the emergence rate of flax, while a high level of Cd(80 mg/kg) decreased the emergence rate of flax. Cd treatment reduced the plant height, stem diameter, leaf number and biomass of flax, and with the increase of Cd contents, the inhibition degree of various growth indexes of flax was significantly aggravated. The plant height, stem diameter and leaf number of flax treated with the high level of Cd decreased by 64.1%, 51.9% and 58.6% compared with the control, respectively. At the organ level, the mass fractions of Cd in root, leaf and stem of flax decreased successively, while at the subcellular level, the Cd mainly distributed in the cell wall and ribosome in flax, which were significantly higher than those in the cell nucleus, chloroplast and mitochondria. In conclusion, Cd treatments with 40, 80 mg/kg Cd inhibited the growth and the accumulation of biomass of flax, and the tolerance of flax to Cd might be due to restriction of upward transport of Cd in roots and isolation of Cd by cell walls and vacuoles.