Volunteers push flower sales online and donate to medics as the COVID-19 outbreak gradually comes under control, Li Yingxue reports.

Millions of roses were to be sold to lovers across China ahead of Valentine's Day this year. Instead many flowers were burned near plots where they grew in Yunnan province.

The COVID-19 outbreak caused Dounan Flower Market in Kunming, the provincial capital of Yunnan, the largest fresh-cut flower market in Asia, to shut down its on-the-spot business between sellers and buyers around Spring Festival in late January.

Even though business resumed a month later, this year's Feb 14 sale was missed, the most valuable season for the country's rose industry.

Zheng Wujin, a technical instructor in Yunnan's flower market, says the burning of roses turned a three-month effort to ashes.

The price of flowers differs each day, reaching the highest on Valentine's Day.

"Growers have to cut out the roses once they bloom to make space for the next batch. If the roses are left rotting in the fields, they will attract insects and infect other roses, so they have to be burned," Zheng adds.

A group of volunteers in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, has set up a store on e-commerce platform Taobao to help Yunnan's growers sell their roses since Feb 11.

More than 1 million flowers have been sold online, through which the group managed to raise donation of 100,000 yuan ($14,100).

More than 4,000 medical workers in Wuhan, Hubei province, the epicenter of the epidemic in China, received forget-me-not flowers from the volunteers on March 8, International Women's Day.

"We wanted to send our love to the doctors and nurses, and hope that the fresh flowers reminded them of spring," says Wu Xiaoyi, 48, the group leader.

Wu, a resident in Hangzhou, has been following the coronavirus news since Spring Festival. She heard about Yunnan's rose situation on WeChat.