Phenolic resins are usually selected as carbon precursor because it gives high production yield and allow the production of porous carbon with high surface areas and tailored porosity. With the increasing concern on fossil fuel depletion and environmental footprint, there is a strong global interest to explore renewable alternative of phenol-formaldehyde resins. In this work, we prepared alkaline poplar bark extractive-based phenolic resins. Using this bio-base phenolic resin as carbon precursor, we further obtained a hierarchical porous carbon material with mciro/meso/macro porosity. Due to its unique hierarchical pore texture, the prepared carbon shows superior capacitive performance with high specific capacitance, excellent rate capability and good long-term cycle stability in KOH electrolyte. We believe that this bio-based activated carbon is a kind of economical and promising material because of the simple preparation process, low cost, environmentally friendly and high performance. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.