Rice husk (RH) and poplar bark (PB) as the staple biomass wastes represent herbaceous and woody plants, respectively. Thermo-chemical conversion of these wastes is a practical approach for value-added reclamation of bioenergy in large-quantity and pyrolysis plays core role in this process. In this work, RH and PB were subjected to comprehensive investigations on pyrolysis behavior, kinetics and gaseous product evolution in a thermogravimetry-Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy at different heating rates. The results demonstrated that both RH and PB underwent three consecutive pyrolysis stages, the TG/DTG curves shifted to higher temperature and the peak temperature intervals also enhanced as heating rate increased. It was observed CO2 was the most dominated species among oxygenated products, followed by C = O bond containing species, while CH4 and arenes were abundant in hydrocarbon gases. In comparison, pyrolysis of RH could generate larger amounts of oxygenated products, and more hydrocarbons like CH4, arenes, and C2+ aliphatics were observed in the pyrolytic products of PB. Model-free kinetic methods showed that the average E-a were 209.1 kJ/mol and 203.9 kJ/ mol for RH and PB, respectively. Criado model-fitting method indicated that pyrolysis of RH and PB both obeyed F1 reaction mechanism first and turned into one-dimensional diffusion and reaction mechanism, respectively at higher conversion of 0.25-0.60.