A facile hydrothermal method is developed to prepare rutile titania sub-microflowers consisting of nanorods with oxalic acid and TiOSO4 as reagents. The diameter of sub-microflowers and nanorods is found to be ca. 800 and 40 nm, respectively. Also, the shape and size of building blocks in rutile titania sub-microflowers can be considerably controlled via adjusting the reaction time and reactant amounts. Rutile titania sub-microflowers composed of nanorods display higher discharge capacity and better rate cycle stability than other rutile titania nanostructures as lithium-ion battery anode material due to enhancing the Li-ion transfer rate for small size building blocks. Crown Copyright (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.