What you see: Something like a cobweb on the top of your pepper.
What it is: The work of a spider!
Eat or toss: Wipe it off and eat. Don’t be too surprised if the spider is still tucked inside its web! But don’t worry — a spider wouldn’t be lurking inside an intact pepper like this.
Can you eat a pepper if a spider has built a web on it?
This little spider housing development was spotted at a Mid-Atlantic farmers market over the summer. I sent the image to Matt Bertone, a diagnostic entomologist at the North Carolina State University Plant Disease and Insect Clinic. He said it was likely the work of a jumping spider. Jumping spiders don’t make webs to catch prey, but rather actively hunt their prey. When they do spin silk, like this, they’re more for housing or protecting their eggs.
In fact, Bertone explained, this spider likely constructed this little getaway for a vulnerable moment of transition in its little life: it was molting. The light brown filmy thing at the edge of the webbing looks like a discarded “carapace” or the exoskeleton shell covering its upper body. The web was likely providing extra protection while the spider’s new exoskeleton hardened. And if you look closely, you can see hints that the spider may have still been snuggled up in its webby nook when this photo was taken.
The top of a pepper is a logical place for a spider because its little nooks provide some cover, and a nice place to weave a little house. We’ve previously written about spider housing in the little dips around apple stems or, for extra tiny spiders, the frilly little cranny where the flower used to be on a blueberry.
All that neato entomology aside, the good news for anyone still interested in eating the pepper is that all this spider activity is happening on the surface of the pepper. Given that spiders eat insects, and not plants, it’s not feeding on the pepper or otherwise puncturing its surface and thus making it more susceptible to microbes. As long as you can smoothly wipe off the webbing and give the pepper a good rinse, and maybe a little scrub, it should be fine.
SOURCES:
- Matt Bertone, PhD. Entomologist. Director, Plant Disease and Insect Clinic. North Carolina State University. Email correspondence. Spring 2025.
- White stuff on one end of blueberry. R. Jackson. EatOrToss.com. September 2025.
- What are those white fluffy things around some apple stems? R. Jackson. EatOrToss.com. July 2025.
