Since Mulan is princess of the month, here some thoughts about which flower fits her the best. The movie, after all, offers some choices. The most obvious one is the magnolia, since that’s the translation of the name Mulan.

Then there is the white flower Mulan wears in her hair when she meets the matchmaker – the same flower she leaves behind when she goes to war. I’m not sure what kind of flower that’s suppose to be. I first considered lotus (since the lotus is such a reveled flower in Asia and gets often connected to the gods), but a lotus has more petals. A white cherry blossom would have exactly five petals, but they would be more round. There are some similarities with a white magnolia flower or a lily, but again, both have more petals. My best guess is the azalea - a white azalea has five petals, looks very similiar, but even more important, in China they are a symbol for womanhood (they also symbolize taking care, temperance and fragility, more or less everything Mulan is expected to be).

And finally, the most important of all, the flower her father points out to her. I originally assumed that they are sitting under a cherry tree – I think mostly because the cherry blossom is such a big deal in Japan and there are festivals surrounding it in China, too. But the “Hanami” in Japan is the one with the long tradition, while China just was inspired by it. Plus, the longer I look at it, the more I get the impression that those blossoms are supposed to be magnolias. You can compare it yourself to the picture of some magnolias at the right, the similiarity is undeniable. Also it would make the whole scene so much more meaningful, if her father points out a late blooming "Mulan" instead of a random flower. But the scripts of "Mulan" I have found so far don't specify, there is only "blossoms" written, so unless the animators give an answer, we'll never know for sure.

But I admit I like cherry blossoms better for Mulan, since magnolias are fairly sensitive flowers, and Mulan is everything but sensitive. Cherry blossoms have three different meaning in the language of flowers: They stand for a good education, transience of life (Japan) and feminine beauty (China). All those meanings fit Mulan and her story nearly perfectly, although the meaning of magnolias (love of nature) works too.
In the end, I couldn’t really decide - So I made two wallpapers, one with cherry blossoms and one with magnolias, to honor the beauty of a late blooming flower.