Yeah I like the spiders protecting my plants too but when its a spider that's lethal to humans, it makes feel a bit uneasy..
And I found 28 caterpillars on that plant today, so the Damn spiders aren't doin too much protecting. Thinking I'm going to go pick up some spray for the worms, any recommendations?
This plant had a daddy long leg spider on it and a white garden spider on it as well, which is typical throughout my garden...just got surprised by the black widow..
I have a bit of background in entomology, so I'll tell you that black widows are pretty shy, they'll scrunch up in a ball inside a crevice or wherever they are and try playing dead before they ever to bite. Flicking it off the plant was a good idea, once something messes with them, they usually abandon shop and start somewhere else. And by somewhere else I don't mean TOO far, not trying to scare you, but obviously it was there because of an abundance of food
Also check your plant for an egg sac or two, the reason you found this one so easily is because this time of year is black widow mating season, they come out in force, so check any dark "somewhat hidden places" in your area.
Another place to DEFINITLEY CHECK, is under your pots, no I don't mean under under where they touch the ground, I mean check your pots, under the "lip of the pot" where you would normally put your fingertips to pick it up. This is one of the best and most common places for them to be in "the gardeners world".
A trick to finding them is if you see the web, its not a normal web, its made irregularly and at random, and usually will have some debris in it, dried up grass, leaves whatever. Anyways if you see a web like this, take a stick and poke at the web, if it seems "really strong for a spider web", its probably a widow.
A big problem now that we find in the US is these newer spiders called "brown widows" now, these ones aren't that new to the game, they've been here for a while already. They are in the same family as the black widow(latrodectus or something like that), build the same style of webs and hide in the same places. They look the same as a black widow and have an hourglass shape similar to the black widow, except the ass end of the brown widow is, brown. lol
In either case both spiders can be somewhat lethal to humans. A decent sized female black widow has venom 15 times more potent than a rattlesnake, but the spiders size and amount of venom is what stops it from being much worse than it could be. The same for the brown widow.
Regardless of how spiders are helpful, these 2 should be cautioned and taken care of properly when you find one. Theres plenty of other spiders that will do the same job but without the worry.
The first 2 pictures are of the brown widow, one of them shows the egg sacks, which are spikey. That last pic is a black widow with an egg sack.
Sorry for the long ass post I just typed, I smoked some nameless sativa strain a buddy gave me and now I'm in rant mode lmao
