Discovering Yunnan's eight best-known beautiful flowers: Camellia (6)

Photo shows camellia flowers in full bloom. (Photo/Liang Xuesong)

With generous sunshine and abundant rainfall, southwest China’s Yunnan province is endowed with rich varieties of precious flowers and plants, being home to more than 2,100 decorative plants, among which at least 1,500 are flowering plants. Camellia, mangnolia, lily, azalea, fairy primrose, orchid, herba meconopsis, and radix gentianae are eight of the best-known flowers of Yunnan.

On Oct. 11 this year, the 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP15) is scheduled to take place in Kunming, capital city of Yunnan. To better display the beauty of the flowers, People’s Daily Online would like to introduce you to the eight best-known flowers of Yunnan, starting from camellia.

Camellia is the city flower of Kunming. Statistics indicated that there are more than 80 camellia varieties worldwide and 35 of them are endemic to Yunnan. People in Yunnan started to plant camellia as early as the Sui (581-618) and Tang (618-907) dynasties. The flower became an important species grown in gardens in the State of Nanzhao, a society established during the Tang Dynasty. Tengchong in western Yunnan is the origin of Yunnan camellia. At the end of the 17th century, Yunnan camellia was imported into the UK, and later into the US.