First of all, don’t have any illusions: growing carnivorous plants will not make bugs completely disappear.
It’s better to think of it as only the unlucky ones that happen to sit on the plant dying.
So you can think of them as basically the same as yellow sticky traps, except you don’t need to clean or replace them—just water them.
Instead of ten gnats flying around, maybe seven will be flying around. That’s about it.
To jump straight to the conclusion: I recommend **Moranensis** and **Gigan…mote** (기간모테).
(Other ones I’ve grown are Capensis Alba, Typical, and Adelae.)
In short, I’ve grown both sundews and butterworts, and sundews have a lot of drawbacks.
Sundew (Drosera) drawbacks
You have to bottom-water them, and you have to change the water.
I once experimented by never changing the water, and it rotted and started to smell, and the Capensis died (especially in summer, you really have to change it often).
If you grow them for a long time, they kind of stretch out, like lettuce bolting—
they get tall, ugly, and then fall over sideways.
They also don’t catch bugs as well as you’d expect.
They drop a lot of old leaves, so you have to clean them up, and if you just leave them alone, they don’t look nice.
They do flower, but the flowers fade quickly and aren’t that pretty.
And I’m not 100% sure, but as a tip: people say the Typical has stronger vitality and reproduction.
In my experience too, Alba flowered and withered, but the seeds didn’t really set properly.
Typical did set seeds, and when I sowed them, they really did reproduce.
And on YouTube, you can even see people growing Typical in regular potting soil (I haven’t tried it myself).
Propagation is difficult.
Leaf cuttings take a really long time, and growing from harvested seeds takes even longer.
Adelae produces tons of babies from its leaves if you repot it into a wider space, which is nice—
but moving them is difficult.
You have to transplant them without damaging the roots, and I failed at that.
A tip for repotting: basically put the plant into a tray of water and separate it from the pot underwater so the roots don’t get damaged.
Fill the new pot with completely dry, fresh peat moss, then use tweezers or something similar to tuck the roots into the soil.
After that, water it—this way you can repot without harming the roots.
Advantages of butterworts (Pinguicula)
They tolerate a lack of water pretty well, almost like succulents.
In fact, if you water too much, they can rot and die.
In particular, it seems the base shouldn’t stay wet.
Be especially careful in hot, humid summers.
My personal tip is not to plant them too deeply when repotting.
If even a little bit of the root goes into the soil at the base, it will absorb water just fine,
and even if there are no roots, new ones will come out on their own.
If you’re really unlucky and it fails to root and can’t take up water, the lower leaves will start drying up one by one—
in that case, just replant it properly so the roots can access water.
Personally, I think butterwort flowers are prettier and last longer.
Like Capensis, the lower leaves keep dying while new leaves grow from the top,
but it doesn’t stretch out, and the overall shape stays the same (super convenient).
They aren’t picky about soil.
They grow well whether it’s sphagnum moss or regular potting soil.
Propagation is much faster and easier with butterworts.
You can just pull off or cut a leaf and place it on moist soil, and babies will pop up from all over the leaf.
Giganmote takes up a bit more space, but it definitely seems to catch bugs better
(the sticky liquid on the leaves feels thicker and more viscous).
There seem to be large varieties like Tina as well, but I haven’t grown those.
Personal tips
This is partly just my guess, but whether it’s butterworts or sundews,
when propagating by cutting leaves and planting them,
leaves that are just before fully mature seem to have a higher success rate than the very largest leaves.
This is also just my guess, but I’m not sure if it’s because I added a small amount of coco chips to the soil
or simply because winter arrived,
but the Moranensis went into explosive growth.
