Teasels Dipsacus fullonum are wild flowers that just keep giving. Bees love their flowers, goldfinches eat their seeds and the empty honeycomb seed heads survive for months, providing winter accommodation for tiny insects - but not without hazard.
This teasel seed head, at my local Low Barns nature
reserve, had a predator lurking amongst its prickly seed chambers. It’s a
tiny crab spider, waiting to intercept any small insect arrivals.
Crab spiders don’t spin silken webs, but often lurk in flowers with their front pair of legs held like crab claws, ready to grab unwary prey. Some species can change their colour to blend with their surroundings, making them very effective ambush predators.
This one was tiny
and they are notoriously difficult to identify, but I suspect it might be a
female running
crab spider, Philodromus
dispar.
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