BEIJING, July 22 (Reuters) - Beijing will plant more than 40 million potted flowers around Olympic venues and city streets, including special "heat-resistant" strains capable of withstanding the Chinese capital's baking summer temperatures.

The flowers would also grace hotels, the Olympic Village and decorate the vast concrete expanse of Tiananmen Square in the heart of the city, Xinhua news agency said on Tuesday, citing Beijing forestry officials.

"July and August are usually a hard time for flowers," the agency quoted Wang Sumei, vice director of the Beijing Landscape Forestation Bureau, as saying.

"We picked up over 20 kinds of heat-resistant flowers from more than 500 species of seasonable flowers to decorate the city, including chrysanthemum and salvia," Wang said.

Beijing has planted more than 30 million plants and rosebushes to cover some 8,800 hectares since 2000 as part of its commitment to hold a "Green Olympics", Xinhua said.

In the past seven years, Beijing had planted 22.7 million trees, 46.5 million square metres of lawn, and expanded the city's green spaces from 36 percent to 43 percent, Wang said.

While welcomed by residents, Beijing's planting of thousands of hectares of lawn and trees has been criticised by some environmentalists who say the city of more than 16 million people can ill afford to divert scarce water reserves for their upkeep.

Last month, a report by Canada-based conservation group Probe International warned that Beijing's Olympic beautification was depleting already strained underground water supplies. (Reporting by Ian Ransom; Editing by Paul Tait)

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