A yellowish colored, Gram-staining negative, strictly aerobic, motile, rod-shaped bacterium, designated THG-SQE7T, was isolated from reed pond water in Shangqiu, PR China. Comparative 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis indicated that strain THG-SQE7T is most closely related to Hydrogenophaga pseudoflava ATCC 33668T (98.4 %), followed by Hydrogenophaga bisanensis K102T (97.6 %) and Hydrogenophaga flava CCUG 1658T (97.6 %). DNA–DNA hybridization showed 53.5, 36.0 and 22.5 % DNA re-association with H. pseudoflava KCTC 2348T, H. bisanensis KCTC 12980T and H. flava KCTC 1648T, respectively. Chemotaxonomic data revealed that strain THG-SQE7T possesses ubiquinone-8 as the only isoprenoid quinone, summed feature 3 (C16:1 ω7c and/or C16:1 ω6c), C16:0 and C18:1 ω7c as the major fatty acids. The major polar lipids were found to be phosphatidylethanolamine, phosphatidylglycerol and diphosphatidylglycerol. The DNA G+C content was determined to be 63.7 mol%. These data corroborated the affiliation of strain THG-SQE7T to the genus Hydrogenophaga. Thus, the isolate represents a novel species, for which the name Hydrogenophaga luteola sp. nov. is proposed, with THG-SQE7T as the type strain (=KCTC 42501T = CCTCC AB 2014314T = JCM 30433T).