Engineering porous heteroatom-doped carbon nanomaterials with remarkable capacitive performance is highly attractive. Herein, a simple and smart method has been developed to synthesize phosphorus (P) doped carbon with hierarchical porous structure derived from lignocellulose. Hierarchically porous P doped carbon is readily obtained by the pyrolysis of lignocellulose immersed in ZnC1(2)/NaH2PO4 aqueous solution, and exhibits excellent capacitive properties. The as-obtained P doped porous carbon delivers a significant capacitance of 133 F g(-1) (146 mF cm(-2)) at a high current density of 10 A g(-1) with outstanding rate performance. Furthermore, the P doped carbon electrode yields a long-term cycling durability with more than 97.9% capacitance retention after 10000 cycles as well. A symmetric supercapacitor with a maximum energy density of 4.7 Wh kg(-1) is also demonstrated based on these P doped carbon electrodes. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.