The national park is known for its cherry blossoms, hot springs, sulfur deposits, fumaroles, venomous snakes, and hiking trails, including Taiwan's tallest dormant volcano, Qixing (Seven Star) Mountain rising to 1,120 m (3,675 ft).

In 1950, President Chiang Kai-shek renamed Grass Mountain to Yangmingshan to commemorate the Ming Dynasty scholar Wang Yangming.

Although the park's elevation ranges from only 200–1120 meters, beautiful landscapes such as ridges, valleys, lakes, waterfalls, and basins are abundant.

[5] Xiaoyoukeng (Chinese: 小油坑) is a post-volcanic geological landscape area located in the north of Taiwan in Yangmingshan National Park[6][7] at the northwestern foot of Seven Star Mountain.

[8] It is approximately 805 meters above sea level and is famed for the fumaroles, sulfur crystals, hot springs and spectacular 'landslide terrain' formed by post-volcanic activity.

Vegetation groups can be divided into subtropical monsoon rainforests, temperate evergreen broadleaf forests, and mountain ridge grasslands.

Summers are warm, humid, and accompanied by torrential rainstorms; while winters are cool, very wet, and very foggy due to the northeasterly winds from the vast Siberian High being intensified by the pooling of this cooler air in the Taipei Basin.