Weedwalking with Argiopes

15, 16 & 17 august 2001

Among other things I am an apprentice herbalist and one of my projects/great pleasures this summer has been experimenting with wildcrafting (herbing, weedwalking, whatever you may wish to call it) and all it entails. Tansy, Yarrow, and Wild Roses have been abundant this year in Nahant as have, I'm sure, many other things I haven't learned to identify yet. They have been collected at various times of day according to the weather and dried a number of different ways (hung upside-down, lain flat, and flowers trimmed from the stems which was most successful for me). I have done battle with the bugs brought inside and the mildew that so easily grows on drying blossoms on this island. I've reminded the cats that the hanging baskets are not swings to be leaped into and spent tedious hours picking cathair out of blooms sent flying care of cats not listening.

It's a bit of a meditation, this weedwalking, on the good days. The hours seem short as the same places are visited day after day, the exact same tasks are performed - clipping blooms, checking for buds, and (yes) sometimes talking to the plants. The focus of the eye and mind become concentrated in the hunt. The eye becomes attuned to the task at hand, learning to see the searched for flowers at a surprising distance, recognizing the subtle differences in colors and sizes and shapes. And as with any meditation or fluency-developing process, all is lost if one tries too hard.

On the humorous side, it would appear that walking around Nahant with a wicker basket in tow is just enough to push the curiosity of wandering residents over the edge. The expected joke about Little Red Riding Hood is made more often than not and then the more serious questions follow. "What are you looking for?" "Why??" The mixed response, the combination of interest and intent to humor the little girl with her basket of weeds, is amusing at times though it is fairly easy to turn the attitude around with a small amount of explanation, folklore, and commentary about the weather and season. And if it comes to it, a smattering of chemistry goes a long way.

There is the wildlife: the woodchucks and groundhogs and beach rats and mice. The crows and the mockingbirds lose interest in each other and proceed to shriek at me in a newfound comradery. Butterflies and bumblebees quietly stand their ground and we reach our agreements regarding boundaries and space as we go about our business. Unfortunately, the mosquitoes do not show the same consideration. There are afternoons and evenings I come home with more stings than I can count. As I commented to one gentleman who asked questions a couple of weeks ago, "There are times I feel like I'm collecting herbs to heal the bites and scratches I get while collecting."

But yesterday there was this.

Spider. Spider? Spider!!!

Now I like spiders and believe whole-heartedly in their beneficial behaviors, such as eating harmful insects and bugs. I also lean towards the oriental belief that spiders are good luck and avoid killing them, often making the effort to catch and set free the lost creatures who manage to lodge themselves in less than appropriate areas in my house. I rescue them from my cats when I find an unfortunate unable to escape from being played with.

However. I am a native New Englander and there are certain facts of my life regarding spiders, bugs, and other things. Cockroaches must not fly or be able to look at me over their shoulders. Snakes should not drop down on me from trees. And spiders, blessed creatures that they may be, must not be overly large while in my sight. So it should be no surprise that this spider, a female Argiope aurantia (or Golden Garden Spider, or St. Andrew's Cross Spider; an Orb Weaver due to the shape of her web), rattled my cage to the point of altering my first impressions of her.

I scampered off with visions of having found some horribly lost and far-from-home species that was without a doubt unbelievably poisonous and able to leap great distances while shooting darts and venom in every direction. Certainly I was going to have to call someone (A zoo? My vet? The ASPCA?) to come pick her up before some unsuspecting child stumbled on her and came to great harm. I would return later in the day with my camera to take pictures and look her up on the web in the evening.

As the day progressed, Lady Spider increased in size in my mind. By the the time I wrote a friend about her later in the afternoon she had grown from the erroneous three inches in length I'd related to my herb teacher to well over four inches. She was well on her way to becoming a SPIDER until reality was re-found when I returned to take pictures. Two inches, leg tip to leg tip, is probably closer to the truth. Further, she did not leap at me when I inadvertantly jostled her web, nor were there any flying poison darts. I started to feel a little foolish...

It was with some childlike disappointment that I finally found out that I'd run across a common Garden Spider; a spider that is found throughout the United States and southern Canada as well as Hawaii and Singapore. Still, Lady Spider is nearly as interesting in fact as she was in my head. It turns out that the female Argiope is more brightly colored than her male counterpart which is usually brown and much smaller. The male hunts for his prey rather than snaring them in his smaller web which is usually located next to his female's. The male is monogomous according to what I have read, though I wonder if this is by choice or care of the fact that the female has a tendency to eat her male partner after mating. While at rest in her web Lady Spider will sometimes fold two or four of her legs underneath her, in effect hiding the fact that she is indeed a spider from prey.

But my favorite tidbit, and it makes me feel unreasonably less silly about my initial alarm, is a piece of folklore from the American South. The story goes that if you can read your initials in the vertical stripe the female weaves in her web (said to be created to increase the strength of the web and to attract insects to it; the species is sometimes called a "Writing Spider" because of it) you will be dead in three days.

Well, as I finish this essay it's been almost three days since I found my Argiope and try as I might I cannot see my initials in her web. Yet, I don't know as I would knowing that story. The superstitious side of me will breathe a sigh of relief when this day is over.