I’ve observed a tuliptree seed and what appears to be some sort of seed in lettuce. The other day, I found what I think is a spider (I haven’t examined the photos yet) in bok choy. Should I set the location to home or to the store where I bought it?

I’d use your home as the location but note in the description field that the organism was found as a hitchhiker in produce, and if the produce lists country of origin (on stickers, exterior packaging, whatever) I would note that as well.

Not meant as criticism, but a genuine question: Are these really observations we want to upload to iNat? We know that the organism was brought to the store by humans and not because it itself chose to travel there, but according to iNat’s guidelines it would still be wild “because humans didn’t inte…

For the spider, you can add the project and observation fields used in this observation: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/10024901 (Chilean lady beetle in Texas from grapes) I think these observations are fair for iNat both because they’re interesting and because this is a method by which i…

[image] joeybom: Are these really observations we want to upload to iNat? Yes. iNat users are welcome to record any observation they have with the living world. We don’t need to police the merits of particular users’ choice of what to observe. To me, it seems these organisms would probably …

a bit off-topic but as a long-time bugnerd and former produce clerk, i always kept an eye out for critters as i worked. in the few instances i found a spider, it was always a local species and probably got into the box in the distribution center or on a truck. i always heard stories about ctenids …

I’ve found caterpillars and aphids in a fair amount of my greens, and beetles in my oatmeal (Now they are all over my house eating all my grains for several years :unamused_face:) I don’t even know how these things are being packed, and I’m still confused about the beetles. They were from Kroger’s,…

Oh grain and flour beetles are the worst. You gotta put all your flour and grains and pasta in ziploc bags.

I’ve iNatted stuff like a leafminer in my chard . But I marked it as not wild and used the date, time and location of where I encountered it in my kitchen.

Critters found in store-bought vegetables

General

asteroidowl January 29, 2026, 8:10pm 7

I say yes, because in the US, we’ve had one too many devastating nonnative invasive species hitchhike on agricultural products or in other imported goods.

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Critters found in store-bought vegetables

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