Sundews Care Instructions

Taxonomic Name: Drosera species

Sundew Family

Herbaceous Plants

If you're interested in growing carnivorous plants indoors and want to try something more exotic than Venus flytraps, sundew plants are an excellent alternative. Their method of snaring insects is simple but effective: their leaves are covered with a host of glue-tipped hairs. Once a victim becomes entangled, the hairs slowly bend over and digest it. Like Venus flytraps, sundews live in bogs and other nutrient-starved mediums, and devouring insects apparently help these species obtain crucial nitrogen otherwise lacking in their habitats. In common with most other carnivorous plants, sundews prefer very high humidity.

How to Care for Your Plant:

LIGHT: Sundews grow best and survive the longest when given either direct sunlight or illumination from bright "grow lights." 

ENVIRONMENT AND WATERING: Keep your plant either in a high-humidity terrarium (by far the best option), or in the enclosed plastic-cup container the plant was sold in. For instructions on how to set up a good mini-habitat, see the Chalet Care Sheet entitled "Making a Carnivorous-plant Terrarium." Make sure your plant's potting medium remains very moist but not quite waterlogged. When you do add extra moisture, use distilled water or rainwater--tap water, especially the kind treated by a water-softening system, may contain minerals harmful to the plant.

FEEDING: While you can apply an all purpose houseplant fertilizer diluted to one-tenth its label recommendations twice a year, the best way to add nutrients is to feed your plant gnats or other very small insects, mites, or spiders (houseflies and even larger ants and spiders often prove to be too large for the plant to handle).  You can also use such pet-store items as pinhead crickets. DO NOT feed the plant hamburger or any other meat product; the fat content may cause the leaf tissue to rot.

SPECIAL CONSIDERATIONS: There are roughly 100 species of sundew, as well as many hybrid varieties. Some of these species and varieties originally come from tropical climates; others, from temperate and even sub-arctic ones. The plant you have may show signs of winter dormancy; if so, some or all of its leaves will die back the way a garden perennial outdoors does. Most often, however, sundews in terrariums stay green all year. In either case, they often experience maximum spate of growth in the spring and summer.