The Seventh Hunan World Famous Flowers Eco-Cultural Festival kicked off March 13 in Hunan Forest Botanical Garden, Changsha, the capital city of Hunan province.

From March 13 to May 7, a variety of flowers, including oriental cherry, tulip, peony, magnolia, azaleas, and camellia, will be on display during the flower show themed with "the Song of Spring".

A pot of dark-purple tulips attracted the attention of many visitors during the opening ceremony of the festival. It's the famous Cathay tulip, a variety of tulip newly cultivated in the Netherlands.

The flower was given the name Cathay by China's First Lady Peng Liyuan, at the invitation of the Dutch Queen Maxima, during a state visit with her husband President Xi Jinping to the Netherlands in March, 2014. The name, Cathay, is both an old name for China in the Netherlands and means "prosperous country" in Chinese.

According to Wang Mingxu, a principal of Hunan Forest Botanical Garden, Cathay boasts the highest grade among tulips for its elegant and noble temperament. There are only around 7,000 Cathay plants all over the world so far, said Wang, and 200 of them have been air transported to Changsha for the spring flower show.

This year, the garden has introduced 120 tulip varieties from the Netherlands so far, aiming to present the most beautiful tulip show in the southern China.

The garden is home to more than one hundred varieties of oriental cherry with different flowing phases. Among them the famous Yoshino cheery is expected to bloom at around March 20.

The organizer of the flower show has also brought in 12,000 peony plants in nine color systems from Luoyang in Henan province, the hometown of peony flowers.