Shoutout to the grower at the Columbus plant swap who caught my pothos cutting before I traded it
I was at a plant swap in Columbus, Ohio 2 weeks ago with about 40 other people, and I had a box of 12 pothos cuttings I'd been rooting for 6 weeks. This older grower named Deb picked one up, flipped a leaf over, and just said 'you have spider mites on this one, and now your whole box does.' I thought she was being dramatic until she pulled out a $3 jeweler's loupe and showed me the webbing on the underside of leaf 7. I had been watering and misting that box on my kitchen counter next to my 20 other houseplants for almost a month without noticing a thing. We ended up quarantining and wiping every single cutting with rubbing alcohol that afternoon, and I drove home with my box taped shut in the trunk instead of on the passenger seat. Lost 4 of the 12 cuttings but saved the rest, and I now do a 60 second leaf check with a flashlight before anything comes inside my house. If you swap plants in person, do you check the undersides before you take anything home, or am I the only one who learned the hard way?