Dumbbell and flower like ZnO nano-crystals were grown via hydrothermal process. The as-prepared dumbbells, with length of 0.8-10 µm and edge length of 0.3-0.8 µm possess a hexagonal structure, while flowers with lengths ranging from 1-6 µm with hexagonal structure have been synthesized. The effect of temperature, solution concentration and growth time on the size and shapes of the ZnO nanostructures has been studied using Field emission scanning electron microscope (FESEM) and X-ray diffractometer (XRD). Further the optical properties of nanostructures were investigated by Photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy, which shows emission in UV and visible regions. From Diffused reflectance spectroscopic analysis (DRA) it was observed that ZnO nanodumbbells and nanoflowers have a direct band gap of 3.27 eV and 3.25 eV respectively. The I-V plot showed dependence of current values under dark and illumination over the annealing temperature during the growth stage. Thus we report a control over the shape and dimension of nanostructures by varying various parameters having implications for (opto)electronic devices.