A quick-glance at the main requirements
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 the plant loves fruit flies anyway 🙂
Grows best in: high-moisture environments, pings grow well also under artificial lights with less humidity
Dormancy: Most pinguiculas do go through dormancy, forming small succulent leaves during this time
For general information common to most Carnivorous Plants, please first read the Carnivorous plants care guide (general information)
Pinguicula care by cultivar
‘Cyclosecta’
This pinguicula is not suitable for terrariums due to the requirement of soil it has – more acidic and the roots should not be kept in water and requires less humidity. All of these requirements are hard to meet in a terrarium environment, therefore it’s best to keep it in a pot. It does also require a dormancy period when the carnivorous leaves will die off and the plant will have a non-carvnirous ‘succulent’-leaf dormancy period. Despite this, I have just (as of mid sept ’25) placed one in my paludarium for a test and so far it seems to be doing great, but I will write more about it later.
Cyclosecta goes dormant when the temperatures start getting lower. Currently, mine is groing only small leaves and the big ones are dying out (sept 2025).
‘Moranensis’
coming soon..
‘Guatemala’
Pinguicula ‘Guatemala’ is suitable for terrariums and grows well in a high-humidity environment. Mine also grow perfectly fine on my shelf under artificial lights. I noticed that once I split a pot that had 4, each into its own pot, they are growing sooo much more and seem to be totally happy. This pinguicula is mid-sized, more towards big size. My Guatemalas don’t seem to be slowing down now that the temperatures have started to decrease
Primuliflora ‘Rose’
I have managed to successfully care for my ping. Primuliflora ‘Rose’ both outside of the terrarium environment and inside, and in the terrarium the growth exploded compared to outside, therefore my experience shows that it is ideal for a terrarium, but it does require being lower and closer to the water source of the terrarium. I experimented and placed 2 pings in the terrarium – one very low with soil constantly soggy, and one in the upper part where the soil is slightly drier and the one above died out, leaving only the smaller plants around it living. I repotted them in the lower area, and they are growing a lot now.
‘Ehlersiae’
I kept Ehlersiaes in a huge pot with many glass snails and at some point the pot turned out to be snail nursery focused more on the survival and multiplying of my little snail zoo rather than keeping the plants alive so much BUT the plants that were around the most wet areas, were growing a lot and like crazy while the ones i placed a big higher up on the “hill” so to speak, did not get almost any water and slowly died out. This ping is super easy to propagate from leaf pullings and that’s why i was ok to sacrifice many of my plants for the tiny snails.
In case you want cute snails, they generally do not harm the plants, unless you have as many as I did, then they’d eat whatever they have to eat, so i started feeding mine cucumber and that saved my plant even. But that’s offtopic (the snails). Back to Ehlersiae – it does prefer high moisture and being closer to water and solid that’s soggy – it then grows a lot of leaves and is super happy.
‘Tina’
Tina is a nice middle-sized pinguicula cultivar that is very easy to take care of and great for beginners.
‘Anna’
Pinguicula ‘Anna’ is a bit more like a weed, grows in clumps of many plants, i love the not-so-big, rather thin and long leaves, it is totally beautiful and flowers like crazy, so i constantly have purple flowers. I stopped pollinating them because I have so many seeds and baby plants that I cannot grow more at this point. I have a clump of them in the paludarium and also under artificial lights in my office room and they grow just as fine in both places, except of course, in the paludarium they have no limit and in a pot they do, so there they seem to grow more, but do not seem to flower yet, perhaps they are too young, i keep them there since the moment they were seedlings, so now half a year or so.
Anna seems to be exploding with growth upon lowering temperatures. It is very interesting to observe that while some other plants slow down and I even lose some plants completely, Anna not only doesn’t care, but explodes in growth.
‘Agnata’
Agnata is a nice huge pinguicula cultivar that also seems to be growing a lot even now when the temperatures have started decreasing. They are very easy to care for and great for beginners.