Deliciously Ella risked wedding day upset with ‘toxic flowers’
A TELEVISION botanist and Gardeners’ Question Time panellist has accused the food blogger Deliciously Ella of setting a bad example by sprinkling potentially poisonous flowers on her wedding cake.
James Wong, 36, a botanist who trained at Kew Gardens and a presenter on BBC’S Countryfile, warned that the plumeria flowers used by Ella Mills on her wedding cake were “highly toxic”.
Writing on Twitter after Mrs Mills’s social media account shared a picture of the gluten-free cake from last year, Mr Wong said: “I’m sure wellness bloggers are nice, well-meaning people, but those are highly toxic plumeria flowers on that cake.”
The 26-year-old food writer and advocate of “wellness” retorted that the flowers – also known as frangipani – are edible, but she agreed that the rest of the plant should not be consumed.
Mrs Mills replied to Mr Wong’s comments with a link to an online guide to edible flowers with the message: “The flowers are edible – the rest of the plant and the sap isn’t, but we wouldn’t use that in a cake.”
The website she linked to, mail order seed company Thompson & Morgan, says of plumeria flowers: “Blooms may be used raw in salads, steeped into a tea, fried, or as an ingredient in making sweets.”
The flowers are, however, not listed in other edible flower guides online by the Royal Horticultural Society.