PbSe dendritic structures have been successfully synthesized by a facile hydrothermal route in glycerol solution without surfactant. Temperature, time, and Pb₂₊source play a major role in controlling the morphology and shape evolution of the product. The obtained products were characterized by X-ray power diffraction (XRD), Scanning electron microcopy (SEM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). This simple synthesis technique for the growth of various nano- and microstructures opens a new route to prepare hierarchical structures of a variety of semiconducting materials in a large quantity. The possible formation mechanism for products with various architectures are presented, which is mainly based on the variation of the ratio (R) of the growth rates along the <100> direction and <111> direction.