Basic care tips
Water: rainwater, distilled, or reverse-osmosis water
How to water: bottom/tray method (add water in the saucer of the pot rather than top-water)
Soil mixture: peat + quartz sand or peat + perlite
Feeding: not required. But these plants loves fruit flies anyway 🙂
Grows best in: high-moisture environments, droseras grow well also under artificial lights with less humidity
Dormancy: Most droseras do experience a period of light dormancy, when the light reduces, their growth slows down
For general information common to most Carnivorous Plants, please first read the Carnivorous plants care guide (general information)
Generally, drosera species tend to lose their dew if there’s an issue with light or humidity, or warmth, so if this happens to your plant, try changing the conditions where it lives and hopefully that will help. I would also take a few leaf cuttings as soon as I get a new plant to make sure I have more of them if the mother plant does not do well. It is also often the case that the conditions you provide are not the same as where the plant lived until it got to you, so this shock could potentially slow down and even sometimes kill the plant. So avoid repotting in the first few weeks and just let the plant acclimate to its new conditions.
Pinguicula care by cultivar
‘Aliciae’
All my experience with Aliciae has led me to the plant dying eventually, so what I do, is once i get a new plant, i immediately take leaf cuttings to propagate the plant and get more plants. This is my general practice with all my plants, not only this one. So far I have managed to keep Aliciae alive only in terrarium conditions. They say that if the leaves of drosera lose their dew, it could be due to not enough light, or a temperature change, and in my cases, it may well be the case as I keep my plants in a plant rack in my office room with lights on but no cover and the temperature fluctuates between winter/summer and day/night even. So the most stable Drosera I have is the one in the paludarium, which seems to be growing well. Sometimes after trimming and letting the plant be, it grows again from some of the stalks, so not all is lost, especially when the temperature start to drop, sometimes it is due to dormancy. Generally, keep its soil wet always and give it a good 10-12h of artificial ligh,t and it should be fine.
‘Capensis Alba’
Very easy to propagate from leaf cuttings and if you get a flower, the seeds sprout super easy too. It grows pretty ok on my plant rack with artificial lights in my office room.
‘Adelae’
Adelae is easy to propagate, however, once the temperatures decrease or after flowering I noticed they start dying, but not when i keep it in a moist environment. I trim off my plant and let it be, often times with droseras in general, the growth start coming up again, and given that it is getting colder, the plant may not be actually dead, but rather going into dormancy.
Pygmy Drosera
‘Pulchella Orange’
This tiny drosera has super cute little orange flowers. They grow on a stalk one after another and they are open for maybe 1h a day or so. If you attempt to pollinate and touch the flower, it would close within 10 minuter, it is amazing how they react. The plant loves rather soggy soil and high humidity environment, according to my experience.
‘Omissa x Pulcella’
This tiny drosera has super cute little pink flowers. They grow on a stalk one after another and they are open for maybe 1h a day or so. If you attempt to pollinate and touch the flower, it would close within 10 minuter, it is amazing how they react. The plant loves rather soggy soil and high humidity environment, according to my experience.
‘Madagascariensis’
coming soon..
‘Scorpioides’
coming soon..
‘Andromeda’
coming soon..
‘Prolifera’
coming soon..
‘Rotundifolia’
This is a winter-hardy plant that goes through dormancy and is kept normally outside. However, in my case, even though i had many of them, siddenly I have only one left which I brought in in order to propagate and then bring the mother plant back outside. Maybe i killed them while harvesting the moss they would live on, or they didn’t survive from last year, i don’t know, but i only have one left 🙁
Drosera Rupicola ‘Red’
I noticed that my Rupicola grew a lot in Dec – Jan (the colder months). Also, contrary to most of the other droseras I own, this one should not be left sitting in water, it should be left to dry a bit (noticed, but not 100% sure of that). However do fill the water till the plant pot gets into 5mm water or so and wait until the water dries or add the pot on a small pedestal so that when the wayer dries by the time it dries in the dish for the other plants it’s been a day or two for this plant to not be sitting in the water and the soils is moist rather than soggy. In a high-humidity environment, I managed to kill one of my 2 plants.
The second one also died at some point, I don’t even remember how anymore, i think i kept it in less humidity and it was alive for quite a while and even grew new leaves but then, it suddently, died..
Drosera ‘Filiformis Florida red’
On ym plant rack with artificial lights and less humidity, it grows but eventually dies. In the paludarium, however, it is exploding, new growth is coming up and it is going really tall with thick, dewy stems/leaves. So it seems to love warmth and humidity like most of the tropical CPs.
Drosera ‘Paradoxa’
I got my Paradoxa fairly recently (as of Sept 2025) and it’s not been doing great on the shelf with artificial lights and variable temperatures, mostly not too warm. So i have moved it into my high-humidity, warm environment of the paludarium. I am hoping it will recover there and will be ok. I will write down more about it later, I notice a few other of my Drosera cultivars are losing their dew, so they may be having the same problems and I will need to think about another solution fast as I am running out of space in the paludarium.