Misumena Vatica

Well I certainly Misssed-U-Mena   last year when the Lily beetles attacked and stripped most of my lilies almost overnight. So there I was strolling around my garden looking at my labours of love last night, and the madonna lillies are out and looking fabulous, and then I looked at a few others and saw a small white thing on the end of one of the flower heads. I thought it was a deformed flower head on the plant, on looking closer to my horror I saw this white crab looking spider with a red dash on it.

I ran into the house and grabbed my camera and took a shot, light was against me but gave me enough to search the web and find out that she is a very useful little spider to have around. Here she is happily protecting my lilies, bless her little socks, so if you see this little lady just say hi and leave her in peace, as for me I hope she stays around for awhile. I have no idea if this is a male or female really!

I found this information on wikipedia along with  the fabulous photo below, and which tells you more about this spider and how it can even change from white to yellow, found it quite fascinating as I have never seen one here before. Also discovered that it's hunting and not really protecting my plants at all. So everything I just said above is not entirely true.Oh well

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misumena_vatia