Red Spider with yellow stripe

[phil leng]

Can anyone please identify a spider, approx 1cm including legs. Red brown with a single longditudinal yellow stripe down body. Seen amongst wild rocket in my garden in Balerno, Edinburgh. No photo as I thought I would be able to identify it from books

[Meta menardi]

Given the wide diversity of colour and the fact that the markings often show as a stripe down the body, try Araneus diadematus, and before you say no it's not, accept that it can be any colour form almost black to lemon yellow, the markings can be very variable and there are very few other spiders of any size around at this time of year.

Identifying spiders from pictures in books is like identifying cars by the colour of the paint.

[phil leng]

What made me think it wasn't Araneus diadematus was the fact that all photos I've seen so far show a cross pattern or spots either side of the main stripe. My specimen had a much more uniform red brown / yellow colour with no other markings. That said, there's nothing else that seems to come close to it so it probably was a garden spider. I'll see if I can track it down again to photograph it. Thanks

[2dogs2000]

I am no expert by any means but is it possible for it to be enoplognatha ovata (candy stripe spider).