Large-scale identification of landscape types in species-rich forest ecosystems is a challenge to landscape designers and forest ecologists. With a systematic grid-sample-plot investigation and landscape-attributes extraction of SPOT-5 imagery in a tropical forest region in Hainan Island, China, we developed a landscape classification system of land cover, successional stages, and dominant plant functional groups in species-rich forest ecosystems. We classified the study landscape into eight land cover types, four successional stages, and six functional patch types, with accuracies at ≥ 78%. The patches dominated by the pioneer functional groups were mainly distributed in areas of early recovery stages on sunny slopes at elevations < 850 m, while the climax functional groups had more occupancies in the late recovery stages on shaded slopes at elevations > 850 m. The slope gradient had no significant influence on the patch distribution patterns in the study region. Our results show that species-rich forest landscapes can be classified into patch types of different dominant functional groups and successional stages through remote sensing in conjunction with ground survey and GIS.