The paper reviews the present conditions of production, development, popularization and utilization of sweet osmanthus in China. With the expansion of production areas, cultivated varieties of sweet osmanthus become more and more diversified. The production has become large-scaled from small house area. At the same time, it has been involved in greening engineering, design and construction, maintenance, renting and displaying instead of only in production and sale. The rapid development of Chinese flowers and plants industry is in bad need of the support of abundant resources. It is of great importance to investigate and collect as many germ plasm resources of traditional flowers which are endemic to China as possible. According to the investigation of cultivated varieties of sweet osmanthus all over the country during the past 3 years ( 2001-2003 ) , altogether there are more than 150 cultivated varieties belonging to 4 groups. The main results are as follows : Siji group, 17 cultivated varieties, Albus group, 57 cultivated varieties, Luteus group, 44 cultivated varieties, Aurantiacus group, 36 cultivated varieties. The challenges and chances of the development engineering works of the cultivated varieties of sweet osmanthus are analyzed in this article also. Although there are abundant resources of cultivated varieties for sweet osmanthus, most of them are still lack of effective utilization. Famous flowers do not mean famous brand. Possession of resources only means having the primary base to create famous brand. It is necessary for us to create new varieties based on the advantage of resources. New famous brand products of sweet osmanthus should be consistently put out to the market, then the sustainable development of sweet osmanthus can be attained.