Episode 268: spiders and houseplants

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Transcript

[0:00] Music. Introduction to the topic of spiders and houseplants

[0:15] Jane: Hello and welcome to On The Ledge Podcast, and this week we are enmeshed in the World Wide Web, not the virtual one, the real one. My guest, arachnologist and science communicator Tea Francis joins me to discuss the spiders that live on and around our houseplants, and I answer a question about a Begonia that's going in the wrong direction.

Jane: So this week's show is about spiders. I'm aware that some people are very afraid of spiders. Some people are phobic of spiders. Some people don't care either way. If you find the topic of spiders difficult, I would urge you to keep on listening, even if all your instincts are telling you that this is not something you need to hear because Tea Francis, arachnologist and houseplant collector, has loads of fabulous advice for how to overcome your spider fears. Her advice is so good, I really recommend having a listen. She talks about what native spiders you might find in and around your houseplants if you are in Britain, what to do if you find hitchhiking spiders not native to your own country on your new houseplants and why spiders are a good thing to have in the home. Yeah, you might find that hard to believe, but it's true. Now, like me, Tea is from the UK, but she has vast experience of different spiders around the world. But of course, the spiders that she mentions that might be in in and around your home and house plants are specific to the UK, so that will vary according to where you are.

[2:04] Jane: But wherever you are in the world, there's still loads of really great information here. And if you're a Patreon subscriber at the Ledge End or Superfan level, there is a chunk of extra chat with Tea where Tea talks about her top three spiders and also which spider species you might be able to incorporate into a terrarium. So head on over to Patreon if you're a subscriber or sign up for a free trial if you want to have a listen to that episode of An Extra Leaf Relief, it's number 113 and there's a link in the show notes. Right, let's crack on with the interview. Over to Tea to introduce herself.

Tea: Hi, my name's Tea. I am a houseplant hobbyist and arachnologist amongst many other things and I'm hoping that today we can talk a little bit about my interest in spiders and how that kind of ties in with the things that I do with houseplants. I would say that out of everything I do, the houseplants and the spiders are top of the list in terms of things that I'm passionate about. As a profession, I am a taxidermist and artist and I do do some consulting for the houseplant scene here and there and work with people as an arachnologist and science communicator where spiders are concerned too. So I'm a bit of a mixed bag but bear with me, because I hope I can bring it all into a nice cohesive picture for you in this episode.

Jane: Oh well it's great to have this chat because spiders they're quite a polarising topic and I'm hoping that through this people who are listening will we'll be able to have a bit more of a context and an understanding of spiders by the end of this, whereas before they might have just wanted to, as I see so often on social media, people say burn it with fire! Whenever they're shown a picture of something they don't know, they just want to burn it with fire. Hopefully we can get beyond that to actually appreciate these creatures and the role they play in ecosystems and in fact the role they can play in our lives. I know you obviously you own spiders, you study spiders. Where do we start with spiders and houseplants? There's something we do see on our houseplants, around our houseplants. If somebody spots spiders around their houseplants, do they need, is there anything they need to worry about? Thhey've got a food source. If they've got a food source, you might want to start looking at your pest situation. So they can actually be a really good indicator for a pest activity that you might not otherwise have noticed. Spiders are not going to stick around anywhere for long if they can't get food. So depending on what kind of spiders they are, how big they are, whereabouts you're seeing them on the plant that can sometimes be a decent indicator of what sort of food they're finding. If they're larger they're not going to be bothering with tiny pests like spider mites or thrips, so you might have aphids or mealybugs or something that they're finding instead. If they're tiny little things and they're living around the soil level then it might be just that they're finding springtails in your soil, which again, they're beneficial, they're nothing to worry about. But the point I'm making with this is they're an indication of the entire ecosystem that exists in house plant pots and around the plants themselves, which I think is something to be encouraged. Having life in your soil is an amazing thing. Having life around your plants can be a good thing. Obviously we don't want our plants covered in pests, but there are other animals that will live on and around our plants that are an indicator of good plant health. So spiders are not going to do your plants any damage themselves.I mean you might find their webs a little unsightly if you don't want them draped in silk and it might be a little bit confusing if you do find silk on your plants and you're freaking out that maybe you've got spider mites. But it just takes a bit of an examination with a hand lens. I know you're a big fan of a hand lens, Jane.

Jane: Yes, absolutely, yes, yes, yes.

Tea: So if you if you're armed and ready with a hand lens then you'll be able to see, pretty quickly if the silk is coming from mites or whether it's a spider that's the culprit but... no, certainly, they're not harmful to your plants at all, but I can understand why people might be a little uncertain that seeing them on their plants. So, I personally, obviously as a spider advocate, and also somebody who doesn't like to use chemical pesticides, I try and encourage people to leave them where they are, because they're providing a service if there are pests around. And then when it comes to actually treating the pests themselves, you can use things that won't kill the spider, you can use things that will actually help the spider. If you use beneficial predators then the spider might snack on those as well, but not to the extent that it would render them useless. So yes, not harmful to plants and quite often encountered, probably more so if you pay a little bit more attention to, if you've got a lot of houseplants, certainly around the pots there are certain spiders that make their homes around the soil. You probably wouldn't even notice they were there unless you went looking for them. I do go looking for them so I know that I have loads of them, but yes, they do occur. And you'll bring them home quite a lot from garden centres. Garden centres are the kind of place where spiders will arrive from elsewhere in the world on imports. They also enjoy the warmth and the humidity amongst all of the houseplants. So quite often when you bring plants home, if you're arachnophobic, it might be wise to just do a quick cursory check around the soil level and on the underside of the pot, just to make sure you don't have any hitchhikers that you might be taking home that you're not going to appreciat seeing later.

Jane: Absolutely. And do, so do, and this is a very basic question, but do all spiders spin silk? Or are there some that don't? Do they all do it or do they do it for different purposes?

Tea: Yes, so all spiders have the capability to spin silk, different types of spiders can spin different kinds of silk, that's something I could talk about for hours so I won't go into too much detail, but they use it in different ways, so different types of spiders will spin different types of webs, some spiders won't spin webs at all unless they're creating an egg sac or a retreat that they will rest in. There are things like jumping spiders and wolf spiders, which we tend to see outside more than we do indoors, they're what we call active hunters. So rather than relying on silk to ensnare their prey or clue them into the presence of prey, they actually go out looking. They've got better eyesight than a lot of other types of spiders so they will look for their prey and they will actually hunt it down. But in terms of indoors, the kind of spiders that we're used to seeing in our houses, not just on house plants but just in general, people will be very familiar with the very long-legged spindly ones that you'll see up in the corners of rooms. Those are cellar spiders, sometimes also called cobweb spiders because they'll spin a kind of web that just gets full of dust and starts looking really shabby after a while. They mostly use that to sense vibrations so if anything walks through that mass of strands they'll know it's there and they'll go after it. House spiders as well, you'll see the males running around on your floor, massive males running around on your floor in late summer.

Jane: What are they doing in late summer? Why are they going?

Tea: That is the time of year that the males have matured and when the males have matured they're on the search for ladies because they know they've only got a little while left before they die, so if you see a big male house spider running around in your house try and take pity on the poor bloke because he hasn't got long left, he's desperately trying to find a lady friend and yeah they're only around for a little while because the females we don't really see they stay in their web retreat, they spin a web retreat somewhere and they stay in that and the males are the ones who go out looking.

Jane: So if I catch, safely, humanely catch that male house spider and put it outside, am I basically sentencing it to death?

Tea: No, not at all. So they're native to this country, they can handle being outside just fine, they would probably prefer to be outside. The biggest thing I find that finishes them off indoors is dehydration because they can't find water in the average house. So more often than not when I find the males in my house they're desperately skinny and quite often very weak. If I take them outside and give them a little drop of water the first thing they do is bury their face in it just you know gulp it down and they're good to go on their way. If you find them in your house and you can scoop them up into a cup and take them outside the best places to release them are anywhere that has sheltered areas where you might see webs you know sort of built in between things like piles of bricks or logs or anything that you might have stacked up behind a shed, anywhere alongside a garage or something that anywhere that's kind of I suppose human structure adjacent. It doesn't have to be indoors. Outdoors is fine. There's plenty of them outdoors. They do just fine. But no, you wouldn't be sentencing him to death. You'd probably be helping him.

Jane: OK. I feel better now because I have, you know, there was one time, on one occasion, my dog, who is, despite being a lurcher, is not a great hunter other than, he did once take out a big hound spider and just ate it before we got to it. But anyway, now I always take them outside and I was kind of feeling bad, like is this gonna make them die? But it's good to hear that...

Tea: I think there's some misconceptions largely based around their name. They're called house spiders. People think well they must want to live in a house. They're called house spiders because they're seen in houses quite a lot, but that doesn't mean they necessarily want to be inside. They end up in here because you know they've, wandered in from outdoors or there's been a window open long enough for one to come inside and it's found somewhere where it can set up shop, you know. But no they're fine outside and honestly the females that live outside live outside year-round they're fine they found somewhere sheltered enough so they can survive just fine the males by the time the temperatures really dip in winter they're dead anyway so you're not going to be freezing them to death not that that would happen anyway because they can handle a British winter as long as they've got sheltered you know a sheltered spot where they can hunker down they'll handle a British winter just fine they're British spiders so they're good for it.

Jane: Well that's really interesting and I mean the other type of spider that I see a lot of in my house are I think there's I think there's three species which are closely related and I may be getting this wrong now but the false widow or the cupboard spider, I see a lot of those and people really freak out about these sometimes.

Tea: Yes that's thanks to the media.

Jane: I was going to say tabloid headlines about these spiders but actually in my experience they're extremely not keen on having interactions with humans. I don't know what you'd have to do to like probably you'd have to accidentally put your hand on them because they just don't want to encounter you. And when I've tried, when I have been trying to get rid of one, move one from somewhere to somewhere else, they just are very clever.

Tea: Yeah, they're very quick - so they have a bolt hole that they will run off into at the slightest sign of disturbance that they don't want to deal with. Sometimes they'll just drop to the ground and curl up into a ball.

Jane: Yeah, they curl up and drop and then you're like, well where have you gone? It's like a little pea that you can't see.

Tea: So the thing is, yes, we have a few species in the genus Steatoda in the UK. The ones that you're most likely to encounter around your house and garden in this area particularly are Steatoda nobilis, which is the one that gets a really bad rap, that's the noble false widow. Steatoda grossa, which is what some people call the cupboard spider. And then Steatoda bipunctata, which people call the rabbit hatch spider, quite often find them up in the corners of rabbit hatches and you'll find all of them in very similar habitats but... I think what tends to happen is on a slow news day, which I can't believe there is such a thing as a slow news day in the Lord's year 2023, where everything is sheer chaos all the time. On a slow news day the British media does really love to run with these stories of deadly false widows sweeping the country, man loses leg to false widow bite and it's just, it's all nonsense and massively over sensationalized. It's the print version of clickbait, it's just, it's nonsense.

[14:15] First and foremost, this whole thing about people losing limbs or having to have things partially amputated because of a spider bite, there is nothing in this country that possesses venom that can do that to human flesh, nothing. The only way that can happen is via a secondary infection, which you can get from anything. I've been bitten by a mosquito a couple of days ago, I could get exactly the same from a mosquito bite or if I catch myself on a rose thorn in the garden or a rusty nail or anything. Any break to the skin is an opening for a potential bacterial infection, spider bite included, but you do have to go some way to get bitten by a spider. I know people love to argue that point, they seem to think that spiders are poised and ready to bite at any given opportunity, but firstly when they bite you they're drawing attention to themselves, so they don't want to do that unless they absolutely have to. Secondly, if they're biting and using their venom, that's a valuable resource to the spider, that's how it hunts for its prey. It does not want to use its venom unless it absolutely has to. So to a spider, it has to perceive a life-and-death situation, it has to perceive a mortal threat for it to want to bite you. So these stories where they're talking about people having massive necrotic lesions from a spider bite, more often than not they didn't see the spider bite them. The stories, if you read them carefully or something like, oh, Steve from Kent was in his tool shed that he knows a spider lives in, and later in the day, he realized that his arm felt a bit hot, and the next thing he knows, he's got a necrotic spider bite. It's just like, he was in a tool shed. He could have caught himself on a nail. He could have nicked himself with a saw. He could have got a splinter from the door. It could have been any of these things, but because the spider was seen in there at some point in the last three months, that's the conclusion everybody jumps to. The venom that these spiders possess is neurotoxic and nowhere near potent enough for a human to have any ill effects from it. The most you'll experience from a spider bite from anything native or established in this country is localized swelling, pain, maybe some discomfort and itching for, you know, a while, but nothing serious. If you start to notice spreading, sort of, you know, redness, pain, heat, all that kind of stuff, signs of infection, that's when you want to go and speak to a doctor about getting antibiotics for a secondary infection, not for spider venom.

Jane: Well, that's good to have that clarified because as you say there's a lot of bad press for these spiders, but actually, they're doing a lot of good in our homes, like they're catching flies. I think, I mean. Can you put the case for why we should be allowing spiders around our houseplants and in our houses generally?

[16:48] Tea: Absolutely. It comes back to the point I made earlier: spiders are not going to stick around unless they've got a food source. If you've got a lot of spiders in your house, if you're noticing that there's a lot of debris around their webs, that's food that they're catching from somewhere. So they're an indicator of something else being present. Now if you live out in the country and you've got a spider that's spun a web by an open window and you've got lights on in the evening, it's fairly safe to assume that it's catching a fair amount of food that's coming in from outside. So you know it's not necessarily a sign that you've got a cockroach problem or anything. But if you've got something, say for example, you might have something like a little false widow or a cellar spider or something set up camp next to your sink in a downstairs bathroom that's a little bit damp and there's a lot of debris under its web, go and have a look and see if it might be woodlice. Because if it's woodlice, they're in there somewhere, they're hanging out somewhere damp, you might want to check and see if you've got any sort of beginnings of structural damage happening. If you're finding bugs that prefer damp areas inside your house. Spiders are going to perhaps clue you into that so it's something that you might want to investigate if you see that kind of thing. But no, I mean certainly, I mean you're in my house right now, I'm a spider advocate, I allow spiders to stay in my house, can you see any huge great big dusty cobwebs in here or in a mess?

Jane: I mean it's interesting with the cobwebs, I definitely, there's one room of my house where I have generally have a lot of spiders. And it's the room where the big doors and windows are where loads of insects come in, it's just as natural they're going to be there and that's the place they will hang out. And yeah, they do a great job.

Tea: Yeah, absolutely, they will take care of the things that do want to bite you. There's plenty of things that do want to bite you, blood-sucking insects, mosquitoes and you know other kinds of things that spiders will happily munch on and take care of for you. So personally, I mean obviously I know I'm massively biased, but personally I see them as, they're not causing a problem. If you're not disturbing and they're not causing you a problem. They don't, these myths about, you know, the average human swallows however many spiders in their sleep, it doesn't happen. It just doesn't happen. They will stay away from any kind of damp orifices that are exuding carbon dioxide. That's not an appealing place for a spider to go, so they're not going to think, oh yes, a human mouth, I'm going straight in there. They will stay away from it, you know, so you see these videos online of people having spiders evicted from their ears that kind of gives the impression that spiders will seek out a human ear to live in but no, the spider probably got caught in their hair, got frightened, saw a dark area and ran into it and will come out when it realizes that it's inside a human being, a potential threat, you know? There's so much, I think the way the information that we see online is presented is very misleading a lot of the time and it does perpetuate this idea that spiders are inherently bad, but they're not, you know, they don't cause a problem, they can't harm you. In the UK they can't harm you. I realize you'll have listeners elsewhere in the world who might have to take into consideration more medically significant species. I lived in Los Angeles for a while so there were black widows, there were brown widows, there were no brown recluses for anyone who might live there. There were no brown recluses in LA but, you know, brown recluses are found elsewhere in the States, There are other types of recluse species that are found in and around California, in the desert. So there are medically significant species elsewhere in the world, in Europe as well, the Mediterranean particularly. But those, even those, they're not going to seek you out and bite you for no reason. And although they're medically significant, which means that if you get bitten by one you want to seek medical attention, that does not equate deadly. It does not equate to deadly I should say. There are very very few spiders in the world that are actually venomous enough to kill a human being and you would have to be out in Australia digging around in the funnel webs that they spin or you know messing around with mature males who are out looking for mates or out in the South American rainforest somewhere to get bitten by one of those. So they've got a disproportionately bad press considering how few there are out there there that can actually do some real significant damage to you. And in the UK it's absolute nonsense, there's nothing, there's nothing here that can hurt you badly. You have got more to worry about from a hamster or a fluffy bumblebee or even a ladybird is more likely to bite you than a spider. It's just trying to sort of get that point across as much as I can is why I do what I do, why I do the outreach online, why I talk to people, why I help people with arachnophobia because the bigger picture is if we all have a very sort of blasé attitude towards killing things that we're not keen on and not having a bit of thought for why these organisms exist where they exist. That's that's sort of opening the door to the sort of catastrophic damage that we're seeing being done to our environment at the moment through sheer complacency. People just don't know that they should care about these little.

[21:51] Things, they just see them as a nuisance. Recently I've even seen people referring to birds in their garden as a nuisance and I just I can't comprehend it. Why wouldn't you want to see wildlife in your garden and to me bugs and spiders they're also wildlife. That's the thing isn't it because it's so interesting to me when you talk about wildlife gardens and stuff, are spiders ever mentioned in that same breath as a wildlife garden? Never! And yet I would imagine they're a pretty darn good source of food for birds, an important part of the ecosystem, that if they were suddenly all gone it would have a massive impact. But we never talk about gardening for spiders, do we? No, we're very selective when it comes to wildlife garden. We like our robins, picking things off our rose bushes, we like our blackbirds, we like our thrushes, smashing snails to bits on stones and everything, but we don't talk about the less cute fluffy things and the things that live in dark places that, you know, we've come to see as being a sign of something spooky or creepy or bad. If I went out into my garden right now and gathered up every single spider out there and took them away, my garden would fall apart. You know, they are an absolutely the vital part of the ecosystems that they inhabit and that can be said for anything that you find in your garden - the aphids that you find in the garden, ticks that you might find coming on inyour dog or you know whatever, they're all vital parts of the environment that they live in. They all fill an ecological niche and if that ecological niche is, disrupted in any way whether they are usurped by an invasive species or or eradicated by overzealous use of pesticide, all of these things, it has a knock-on effect both ways because not only do they, so if they're somewhere in the middle of the food chain, they're predating on the things that are beneath them, but they're also being predated upon by the things that are above them. So you're gonna see the things that rely on them as a food source start to suffer because their food source is gone, and then you see the things that we rely on them to control suddenly running riot because there's no predator to keep them under control anymore. So in the case of spiders, they're extremely important to agriculture when it comes to pest control, just like natural pest control.

[24:06] Yes, we use pest control products to keep on top of things more than nature would usually, but nature's got a perfectly good balance figured out already. So if you take spiders away, all of a sudden the pests that they would be feeding on can now do whatever they want. They will lay waste to a field of, you know, whatever it is we're trying to grow, or a beautiful ornamental garden, in no time at all, because they're not being kept in check anymore, because their number one predator has now left the building, and you know, that's great. So the animals that feed on the spiders, they don't feed on the things the spiders feed on, so they're not going to start eating those instead. They're just going to think, well my spiders are gone, so I'm going to leave. So now you don't have any birds anymore. Now you don't have any amphibians or you know frogs by your pond or you know it's all it's all it's all leaving because you've taken away one vital component in that entire machine that is the ecology of the average garden and it's you know to a lesser extent indoors as well. I'm not saying that, you know, if you take all of the spiders out of your houseplants, they're all going to die. But it's certainly, if they're there, they're there for a reason. They're there because there's something to support them, and they're there because perhaps there's something else that they are supporting, or, you know. It's just, the point I'm trying to make with that is, we need to be more considerate of why they are where they are in the first place, and try and work on ways to live peacefully with them, rather than trying to have this obsessive need for control.

[25:35] You know, we see so many products on the shelves that are being sold to us. Spider deterrent, spider eliminator, insecticide of just about every colour of the rainbow you can imagine. It's got fancy marketing on it. It's a pretty coloured bottle and it says this will do everything you ever wished it would do, so you buy it without a second thought for what's in the ingredients label and what that's going to do to the environment. Oh, but I'm only using it it indoors it's fine. Okay, so you use it a few times and you realize it's not really doing its job. What are you going to do a few years from now when you look at it and you're like, I'm not using that anymore? You're going to dump it down the sink and throw the bottle in the recycling because, well, recycle the plastic because that's good for the environment. But you've just dumped a chemical down your sink that has absolutely catastrophic effects on aquatic life and you've just put it into the waterways.

[26:21] Music.

[26:32] Jane: More eight-legged information coming soon but now it's time for some housekeeping and question of the week. Big news this week related to Legends of the Leaf. I found out that there There is going to be an audio book. I repeat, there is going to be an audio book. This is not a drill. I am getting the audio book rights back from the publisher. So I'm hoping to get the audio book done late summer, early autumn, and you will be able to buy it from all of the regular places like Audible and so on. And I'll let you know as soon as that is incoming.Exciting, can't wait to have a chance to read through the book, I bet I'm going to spot some typos.

[27:15] One other announcement about the book. I have got my hands on, I think it's eight copies of the book. These came from Handspun Botanics, a shop which has closed down because the owner, Nikki, is moving away. And Nikki very kindly offered to give me back the books to do something with.So what I've decided to do is find people in the UK who deserve a copy of my book who might otherwise not get one. So this might mean a school library or a group of people who are really into houseplants or an individual who's been affected by the cost of living crisis and just can't afford to splash out 15 quid on a book right now but would really love the book. So if you are that person or that group or organisation and you're in the UK, Sorry it's only UK, but honestly, postal rates are so exorbitant now that it has to be UK only, but if you are that person or you want to nominate somebody, please drop me a line to ontheledgepodcast.gmail.com. I'm going to give it a couple of weeks for people to suggest people, if I've got more than eight, pick the names out of a hat to choose who gets the books. It's a small thing, but it's nice to know that copies of the book will be getting where they're needed.

Thank you for all your lovely messages and thoughts. As always, I had a great message from a chap called Matt Garlic, who got in touch to show me the wood turned pots he's been making for his house plants. Absolutely incredible. If you're in the Facebook group, house plant fans have on the ledge, he's on there and you'll be able to see a post with some of those on there. And I also want to give a shout out to Alicia who became a legend this week, my most popular tier on Patreon and Alycia took advantage of a free trial and then decided to sign up. So thank you to Alycia. And if you want to join the Patreon clan for ad free episodes, Extra Leaf episodes and my famous Christmas mail-out, then check out the show notes at janeperrone.com to find I don't know how.

And lots of people seem to have enjoyed last week's container gardening episode. Kelsey got in touch with a good question about tomatoes. Mark and I did talk a little bit about growing tomatoes in last week's interview and Kelsey noted that in the midwestern US where they live, tomatoes are a staple plant and come August everyone has way too many tomatoes. And Kelsey writes, dinner parties are dangerous because everyone will always try to send you home with piles and piles of tomatoes. Oh gosh, I would love to have that problem. Here in the UK, we have a shorter and colder summer than that of the Midwest and US. And so oftentimes people grow tomatoes in a glass house or greenhouse for that reason, to provide that bit of extra protection. Although that comes with its own challenges too. There has been a lot of tomato breeding gone on to create cultivars that can cope with shorter seasons, as we have here in parts of Europe. And in fact, the tomato that I'm growing this year is one called Yellow Scotland, which I got from the Heritage Seed Library, and it's specifically bred for short summers. So here oftentimes you'll get to the end of summer and frost will be coming and your tomatoes will still all be green. That's a very common experience. So if you can have a tomato that has a quicker time from flowering to fruiting, then you and get a greater chance of getting your tomatoes before the season ends and not having to ripen them off the plant. So yes, tomatoes, choosing the right tomatoes is important, particularly if you're living in a climate like I am where the season is somewhat against you at times.

Right, on with the Q&A and this week's question comes from Beatrice who got in touch about a begonia that didn't seem to be growing quite as expected and Beatrice helpfully sent some pictures through. And the problem was this begonia seemed to be growing out and not up. And once the pictures came through, all became clear. The picture that Beatrice sent through was of the beefsteak begonia, Begonia erythrophylla. And this is where a little bit of knowledge really does help with with your begonias and, well, with any houseplants, because it can be confusing.Some begonias do grow straight up, some want to grow out, and this is one of those plants that will tend to creep vertically rather than put out an upright stem. And Begonia erythrophylla is a really well-known and historic begonia, if I may say. It was one of the first begonia hybrids done in 1845. They crossed begonia manicata with Begonia hydrocotylifolia, hard one to say, and produced the beefsteak begonia, which we know and love.So Begonia erythrophylla, as the beefsteak begonia common name suggests, has these very dark, greeny red leaves that I guess look a bit like beefsteak. They're quite meaty and quite solid. Makes a good begonia if you're like me, a person who is not very good at watering your begonias. And it's very tough, and that's why it's been successful and stayed popular for so many years because they do get handed down from generation to generation. And if you get the chance, do have a look at the undersides of the leaves, particularly with a light source on the other side of the leaf because then you'll see the beautiful red undersides and the lime green veins glowing through. They look particularly attractive and that's why, as I say, it's good to hang them or have them high up because then the light comes through and you can see those beautiful colours on the leaves. Now this is one of the rhizomatous begonias. These do tend to be the ones that have these rhizomes, so horizontal stems that grow very much out rather than up. Although interestingly there are some rhizomatous begonias that do grow upright, confusingly and annoyingly, and one of those being Begonia diadema. But on the whole, begonias that are rhizomatous tend to be the ones that don't put on a lot of height instead they go out and make a big clump. So yeah it pays to know what kind of begonia you've got if you've got a cane begonia like something like Begonia maculata then yes it will go up but if you've got this kind of begonia like Begonia erythrophylla it's going to go out what do you do with it when it starts going out we've got options you can just chop off pieces of that stem and pop them up separately and make new plants you can encourage it to grow and droop and it will kind of go all around the houses that stem.

[34:41] And it can make even make a ball - it does look rather good in a hanging basket because it does kind of ball up eventually so it's one of those ones usually i'm quite keen on hacking back plants but I think for this one, if you can let it grow on it can make some really interesting shapes but at the same time like all begonias it's incredibly malleable so you can just take a leaf off and propagate that or a piece of stem, either way is fine. If you do let it mature and get large then you will find that in the winter you get these rather nice pink flowers and if there are not much if there's only one of them but once you get a good flush of them, flowering stems all together then you do get a really nice display. So I hope that helps Beatrice with your begonia dilemma. If you've got a question for On The Ledge, drop me a line ontheledgepodcast.gmail.com is the address to use.

[35:38] And now it's time for more spider-based chat with Tea Francis. And if you've been listening to the interview so far but you're still thinking that spiders are not your friends, I wanted to find out if Tee had any advice for you. How do they go about building a different relationship with spiders? It's kind of hard if you've got that phobia.

Tea: Yeah, definitely. Now, a lot of your listeners will be familiar with the Plant Rescuer. She's a friend of mine, she was arachnophobic, I would say probably still is arachnophobic to an extent, but she's a hell of a lot less arachnophobic since she's had me in her life, because I've told her about the importance of spiders and I've also told her that they're not as dangerous or as nasty or as terrible as people seem to think they are because of what they've read in the papers. She's got a spider in her porch, it's a false widow and when I told her it was a false widow the panic that flashed across her face for a brief second was like oh my god I was like don't worry it's fine, she's up there doing her thing she's got her web she's not gonna leave her web so now this spider has got a name - her name's Valerie, she lives in the porch and this is one of the things I tell people it might sound silly and I'm not generally on board with anthropomorphizing animals and assigning human emotions and needs to animals but if you see a spider and you're afraid of it, if it's not moving, if it's just in its web and you're a bit weirded out by it, I challenge you to take a few deep breaths, acknowledge that it's there and give it a name and say hello to it and every time you see it, say hello to it, refer to it by name. Every time you walk through your porch, alright Steve, how's it going? Just give it a name because it might sound silly, it might sound childish, but what that does is it kind of enables this, it kind of activates this kind of, compassion in your mind. You've got a creature with a name now, you can't possibly hurt Steve, can you? What if Steve's got a family, you know? So all of a sudden you start thinking of it not so much as a horrible thing that's to be reviled and you know the horrible, no get it away from me, now you've got something that actually maybe it does have just as much right to be there as me, perhaps I won't freak out. Now I do understand that obviously some people are extremely arachnophobic and can't stand the sight of even a photo of a spider on a phone screen, let alone one in their house and I do respect that and I know that that's a very very difficult and debilitating thing to live with - members of my family are extremely arachnophobic so I am completely sympathetic and to those people the one thing I would say it's more it's more an ask than anything else is please don't kill them please don't just smash them on sight because it's just it's not good it doesn't help you it doesn't help the environment when I say it doesn't help you, yes it's neutralised the perceived threat, but it's not helping you move past your fear in a constructive way, it's not helping you understand, you, know, why you're afraid of them or what you might be able to do to lessen the fear. In my opinion, the goal should always be to reduce the fear, rather than reduce the presence of what you're afraid of, because spiders are everywhere. When I see people online saying, oh could you please put a trigger warning on a photo of a spider I'm like well yeah I can but you're gonna go outside later and they're outside they're everywhere you know I don't like.

[39:00] When people say things that putting trigger warnings on on photos of something that is everywhere I can understand it you know on photos of nature if you've got a safari photo of a lion taking down an antelope and it's gory yes okay put a content warning or something on that but asking for a trigger warning on photos of spiders or other bugs I don't think it helps the it allows people to put them out of sight too easily and to keep on with this kind of idea of well they're gross I don't want to look at them so if I see them I'll just kill them. My whole thing is I want to try and change people's perception of them, not necessarily make everybody absolutely you know full-on spider lover but just perhaps give them pause to think okay well hang on a minute perhaps it'd be more beneficial to me to overcome my fear so that if I do find run in my car or you know if one does land in my hair or something I'm not, going to go into crisis mode I'll be able to calmly...

Jane: What is the best way of dealing with it? If you really can't have a spider in a room with you I think a lot of people sadly go for the vacuum cleaner and vacuum up which is obviously like that's not going to end well for the spider. But is there a, what's the best way of dealing with them if you you've got to get them out of that room?

[40:09] Tea: If you've got somebody that lives with you or that is around the best way is to ask somebody please can you come and get this for me and scoop it up into a cup bit of paper under a cup and put it outside or something um if you're on your own and you're absolutely deathly terrified and there's nothing you can you really can't go near it then I can understand people wanting to sort of brush it away with a broom or vacuum it up or smash it or something - that's when the whole giving it a name thing starts to come in. If it's in the room and you can just sort of get used to it being there. The ones that really don't help me when it comes to this sort of education are the house spiders, and some of the big ones, because they don't stay still, they run around, they can't see very well so they seek out shadow, they don't want to be out in the open. If you're a hulking great big human casting a shadow and it can see that there's a dark area over there it's going to come running towards you so people will now perceive that as that, spiders trying to kill me and you know it's it they don't bless them they really don't help themselves much when it comes to how they are.

Jane: It's the ones where - I've had this before where one like drops down or something and, you hear the actual like thud that's the ones that really get me because I'm like how the heck heavy are you and you're able to make a thudding sound but as you say like for also for me I think those bigger ones they almost get to the point they're so big that I'm not scared of them that sounds really weird but it's certainly yeah.

Tea: They've all taken on sort of like a caricature of themselves like okay yeah you're a big spider but like you're stupid big - actually no I'm not scared anymore, I'm impressed.

Jane: Yeah exactly.

Tea: But no - to get back to it because I'm sure there will be people who will want an answer to this yeah if you're on your own and you're really afraid I do understand that people are going to have a gut reaction to that and they are perhaps going to do something that is going to end up with, you know, the death of the spider one way or another. If you are dedicated to wanting to help them and not kill them but also not touch them, then you could perhaps get yourself a cheap little handheld desktop vacuum cleaner or something, a little Hoover thing or something that's not terribly high-powered, suck it up into that and then it's in the little see-through container that catches all the dust and then you can just go and take the container off put outside and run and then come back the next day and it'll be gone. You know things like that are helpful. You see these contraptions that you can buy online I think you can get them on Amazon these like you know those claw things like the trigger activated like claw toys well they've made these ones now that have like a brush on the end and it's like a long sort of telescopic thing it's got a trigger on it that you pull with your hand and it sort of makes this brush open and close and you can scoop up critters with this brush without having to touch them and then release them outside. So there's things like that that you can consider or alternatively if you're brave enough to get close enough to just put a cup over it and run then at least you know it's under the cup and you know perhaps later on if somebody comes home you can ask them to slide a bit paper underneath it take it outside or you know if you're feeling brave and because ou can prepare yourself for the fact okay I know there's a spider under that cup I shall go and you know make sure that I'm gloved up, I've got my hazmat suit on, you know, you can do whatever you need to do, take a couple shots of vodka before you do it, whatever you need to do and go and relocate it, but I would heartily recommend that you try whatever you can, whether it's reading about them online, talking to people like me on Twitter about them, asking questions, looking at photos, anything that you can do to desensitize yourself enough that you can even set yourself the challenge, you know, do you really want to be deathly terrified of something that's like a thousandth of your size if not less? Like, you know, you can do this, you've got this, it just takes time to, you know, understand that it's not gonna hurt you, yeah they're a bit freaky, yeah they can move fast, but you're an intelligent, upstanding citizen, you've got this, you can do this, you know?

Jane: Absolutely, absolutely, I think that's really good advice and it's a process isn't it? There's going to be as you say you can start yourself off gradually maybe looking at some pictures online and because you are gonna you are going to come across spiders this is I've got a couple of friends who are really phobic and I sort of say to them well you can't just ignore this because it's gonna happen they're gonna end up you're gonna come across them in your daily life and you've got to have a strategy for dealing with it and as you say there are ways you can gradually build up your kind of resistance to it and not feel so immediately fight-or-flight that you're going to do something awful to the spider. But going back to the house plants, presumably there are instances from what you've said then of spiders hitching a lift. Is there any occasions where we need to be a bit like oh should we be doing something with these spiders if they're not native to our our own environment?

Tea: Yeah yeah absolutely - okay so Twitter is an amazing resource for this kind of thing if you can snap a photo of a spider you can post it on twitter and you can ask hashtag spider twitter spider twitter. And you can ask for an ID and you can tag um accounts like the British Arachnological Society myself, I'm on there as @t_francis - there's loads of people who are affiliated,with the British Arachnological Society, people who are just hobbyists, people who are amateur arachnologists, people who are professional arachnologists, I occupy the grey area somewhere in between both of those things, and you know they will all happily help you identify what you've got. If it turns out that you've brought something home on a plant that is not native to this country, there are procedures that should be observed. First and foremost, most important, is you're you're not supposed to release it outside. If it's non-native, then releasing it outside, technically it's illegal, it could potentially cause issues.One spider on its own, you know, people may not see that as being much of an issue, but if it's a species that has the capability of surviving our climate, and you've just released a gravid female, which means she's full of eggs, into the wild, she's gonna go hole up somewhere, lay her egg sac, which is gonna have hundreds of babies in it, and if they're able to survive outside, they will then breed with one another and then you've got the beginning of a new species establishing in the country. Which happens all of the time. We do have a lot of species that have established in the country that have come in, without anybody realizing on cargo from God knows where, with climate change as well, with the temperatures increasing and the temperatures being sort of more, fluctuating a lot more than we're used to. You know, there's a lot of changes going on environmentally that are sort of allowing things to establish that might not have been able to 10, 20 years ago. So hypothetically, you've gone to the garden centre, you've found the perfect houseplant for your south-facing, east-facing windowsill, whatever, we don't want to cook it. And you've brought it home, and you've noticed that there's a spider in the pot, or on the underside of the pot. What is it? How, as somebody who doesn't know anything about spiders, how are you supposed to know if this was in your house already, and it's just shown up immediately on your pot? It was from the garden centre. Does it live in this country, or has it come in from whatever exotic location? First thing to do is to try and get an identity. So like I said, if you're on social media, you can do it on Twitter - I'm sure there's people, well there are people, I'm on Instagram. Instagram you can use, Facebook you can use, all of these different social media platforms you can use. There's definitely people out there who are either active in groups or have made it their entire profile thing. Search hashtags #UKspiders, #Britishspiders, whatever. You'll find somebody who you can shoot a quick message to. Failing that you can go to the British Arachnological Society's website and find contact information for them to ask them, you know, if you want to send them an email or whatever. There are people that you can ask that will help you identify what you've got. If it's one of our natives you can put it outside, no problem. If it's something that has established in this country but is not native then they can advise you as to whether or not it's a good idea to let it go or whether, you know, there's certain things that have established in garden centres that can't survive outside the glass house or a building in this country. They're not native, they're established, but only indoors. So, you know, those things, if you let it go, it's not going to last five minutes outside anyway. But if it's an exotic spider that really shouldn't be here, the next thing to do is to decide how you want to deal with it. Now, some people who don't want to go to the trouble of posting it somewhere or taking it somewhere might opt for euthanasia, in which case you put it in a takeaway tub or something you put it in the freezer. Obviously I don't condone that because I would far rather say to you, I will pay the postage and you can send it to me and I will care for it. It won't be released, it will just be allowed to live out its life here and I'm not the only person who does that. There's plenty of people, again affiliated with the British Arachnological Society, of people who are active on Twitter, who will gladly receive spiders from people who are willing to pack them up and send them. And it's surprisingly easy to pack up a spider and send it in the post.

Jane: I wanted to ask that, like how do you send a spider through the mail, like what is it?

Tea: All you need is some kitchen roll, some sort of lidded plastic container and a box or something big enough to pack it in. Do you have to write fragile spidery? If you're sending it via Royal Mail, which is recommended to send it by a special delivery or first class recorded so it's next day delivery, you can put, it is advisable to put on the the outside of the box, "live insects". I know they're not insects, they're not insects, but if you just put live insects it gets the point across to people who don't care and it's gonna stop people from freaking out if you say box'o'spiders.

Jane: I love that!

Tea: I mean I have received boxes that have been labeled 'spiders' before and I have to think about those poor people in the sorting office who are just like oh my god what? But you know you can re-label it as live insects or just fragile on the box, handled with care, you know. Basically if you've ordered plants in the post, it's very similar, you have to take care not to let it get battered in the mail, so you pad it out and you make sure that it's securely inside a nice strong box. It's the same with spiders, so if you take a takeaway container or a yogurt pot that has a lid on it, poke a few air holes in it, line the inside of it with kitchen roll, if you can spritz the kitchen roll a little bit so it's not entirely dry, just got a little bit of moisture on it, Let your spider go into the tub, put the lid on it quickly and then put it in a box, pad it with some newspaper or packing peanuts or whatever, pick your poison, tape it shut, put your address on it, send it off and job's a good'un.

Jane: And away it goes to its new home. Yeah, well that's good to know. I mean, yeah, that's a very good point that with the international flow of plants moving around the world, you know, perhaps slightly less now that we're in a Brexit situation here in the UK, but certainly still, lots of plants moving around, of course there's going to be species that end up coming in on those those plants and yeah fascinating. Thank you so much Tea for giving us a brilliant summary of why we should be really taking care of spiders and just learning more about them because I think most of us just know very little right now, so hopefully people will be going away and just looking for them in their environments and realizing there's a lot more spiders than they thought.

Tea: Yeah yeah I definitely recommend it, go out and take some interest in them and if you are one of those people who is terrified of them then I do seriously recommend starting off by just giving, them a name and saying hello to them instead of screaming.

Jane: Thank you so much.

Tea: Thank you for having me.

[51:58] Jane: Thanks so much to my guest, Tea Francis, and check the show notes at janeperrone.com for all the places you can find Tea's work. Well, I hope that's left you feeling a bit more positive about our eight-legged friends, and I'd love to know what spiders you've spotted in and around your house plants. Any great finds, let me know. That's all for this week's show. I'll be back two weeks from now with a fresh episode for your delectation. But until then, I hope you and your plants are, as I like to say, within acceptable parameters. The music you heard in this week's episode was Roll, Jordan Roll by The Joy Drops, The Road We Used To Travel When We Were Kids by Komiku, and Whistle by Benjamin Banger. All, tracks are licensed under Creative Commons, visit the show notes for details.

[53:18] Music.

I talk to arachnologist and houseplant collector Tea Francis about the spiders that live on and around our houseplants, including how to overcome your spider fears. Plus I answer a question about a Begonia.

This week’s guest

You can find Tea Francis on Instagram at @teasjungle and on Twitter as @tea_francis. If you like what Tea does, why not support her? Tea’s Patreon is here.

Patreon subscribers at the Ledge End and Superfan tier can listen to An Extra Leaf 113 where Tea reveals her top three spiders and talks about the pros and cons of spiders in terrariums.

Chapters

0:00:15 Introduction to the topic of spiders and houseplants
0:04:28 Spiders around houseplants are an indicator of good plant health and ecosystem, and are not harmful to plants
0:08:59 Introduction to House Spiders and their Behaviors
0:11:27 Misconceptions about House Spiders and their Name
0:13:55 Misconceptions about Spider Bites and Venom
0:16:48 The importance of Spiders in our homes
0:21:40 The bigger picture: Why We Should Care About Spiders and Wildlife
0:26:32 The harmful effects of Pesticides on the Environment
0:29:37 Listener Q&A on Begonia
0:35:38 Changing perceptions of Spiders
0:40:09 Dealing with spiders: from scooping to giving a name
0:44:03 Tips for overcoming arachnophobia
0:45:25 Identifying spiders and the British Arachnological Society
0:48:57 How to send a spider through the mail and caring for them
0:51:58 Outro and guest credits

Steatoda nobilis is one of six species of false widow spiders live in the UK. Photograph: Nicola Branson/iStock.

Check out these notes as you listen…

• Spiders themselves are absolutely no risk to your plants whatsoever. If you're finding spiders around your plants in abundance, it's because they've got a food source, so it’s worth looking whether your plants have a pest infestation - spiders can be a really good indicator for a pest activity that you might not otherwise have noticed!

• If you spot webbing around your houseplants, it may be spider silk rather than the webbing of red spider mites - which are, like spiders, classed as arachnids but they are not closely related to spiders. Get a hand lens or magnifying glass out and take a look and you should be able to spot the difference. Red spider mites look like this.

• Non-native spiders can sometimes hitchhike in on your houseplants. If you think you might have one on your plants, ask for an ID on #spidertwitter or ask the British Arachnological Society.

• In the UK, there are no spiders that can cause major damage by biting you - a secondary infection can happen from a mosquito bite, scratch or other injury.

• One of the most common species you may come across are from the Steatoda genus: S. nobilis, the false widow, S. grossa, the cupboard spider and S. bipunctata, the rabbit hutch spider.

• You might also see - especially in autumn - the house spider, Tegenaria species. These are usually males on the lookout for females.

• If you are phobic about spiders, Tea suggests giving them a name so they feel like a character rather than something that’s a threat. She says “I challenge you to take a few deep breaths, acknowledge that it's there and give it a name and say hello to it and every time you see it, say hello to it, refer to it by name. Every time you walk through your porch, alright Steve, how's it going?”

• Try gradually building up your resistance by desensitizing yourself gradually by reading about spiders and looking at pictures online.

• If you need to remove a spider from a room, find someone who can help you out, or alternatively use a low-powered mini vacuum or one of the spider removal tools you can buy online to safely remove the spider. Once captured, place it outside and let the spider leave in its own time.

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QUESTION OF THE WEEK

Beatrice’s begonia.

Beatrice got in touch to ask about pruning her begonia plant as it is growing out, not up. Helpfully, she sent pics showing the plant, which turned out to be a Begonia erythrophylla, a really well-known and historic begonia. It was one of the first begonia hybrids, created in 1845 in a cross between Begonia manicata and Begonia hydrocotylifolia. Begonia erythrophylla, as the beefsteak begonia common name suggests, has these very dark, greeny red leaves that I guess look a bit like beefsteak. This makes a good begonia if you're a person who is not very good at watering your begonias as the succulent leaves can cope with dry soil. It's very tough, and that's why it's been successful and stayed popular for so many years because they do get handed down from generation to generation.

This is one of the rhizomatous begonias - these grow from stems that grow horizontally so they are generally wide rather than tall. It can make even make a ball - it does look rather good in a hanging basket. If you can let it grow on it can make some really interesting shapes. But you can also just take a leaf off and propagate that or a piece of stem, either way is fine. If you do let it mature and get large then you will find that in the winter you get these rather nice pink flowers and if there are not much if there's only one of them but once you get a good flush of them, flowering stems all together then you do get a really nice display.

Want to ask me a question? Email ontheledgepodcast@gmail.com. The more information you can include, the better - pictures of your plant, details of your location and how long you have had the plant are always useful to help solve your issue.

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HOW TO SUPPORT ON THE LEDGE

Contributions from On The Ledge listeners help to pay for all the things that have made the show possible over the last few years: equipment, travel expenses, editing, admin support and transcription.

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CREDITS

This week's show featured the tracks Roll Jordan Roll by the Joy Drops, The Road We Use To Travel When We Were Kids by Komiku and Whistle by BenJamin Banger (@benjaminbanger on Insta; website benjaminbanger.com).