In Chinese-English translation practice, translators both in China and abroad often take it for granted that the “mei” in “meizi”, “meihua” and “lamei” is identical to “li”, and that both can be translated indiscriminately into “plum” in English. However, Chinese “mei” and “li” are clearly distinct. Chinese “mei” can be divided into two categories: fruiting mei and flowering mei. Moreover, “lamei” belongs to a completely different species from the former two. Therefore, using “plum” as their English equivalent has undoubtedly created unnecessary barriers in cross-cultural communication. Based on relevance theory and naming conventions, this paper contends that the misleading translation “plum” should no longer be applied to both “mei” and “li”. In accordance with English word-formation rules and Chinese pronunciation, it is urgent to coin a new English term for the “mei” in “meihua”, so as to fill the lexical gap in English for this culturally specific concept. Meanwhile, “winter-sweet” should be retained as the standard translation for “lamei”. In this way, the confusion between “mei” and “li”, as well as that between “meihua” and “lamei”, can be clarified in the English translation of such culture-loaded Chinese expressions.