Pinguicula, or Butterworts, are easy care small carnivorous plants that make great additions to your indoor plant collection. Not only do they look pretty, with their gorgeous bright pink flowers, but they also do a great job at controlling fungus gnats.
Check out our Pinguicula care advice here. The main points to note are:
- they don’t like soil, and fertiliser can kill them. We grow them in sphagnum moss, but sandy peat moss, vermiculite, and perlite are some other growing options.
- They like to be bottom watered with room temperature tap water only. Some say they should be watered with distilled water, which you should consider if you have particularly hard tap water. Here in metropolitan Melbourne, the tap water is fine, but rainwater is always best.
- They have very fine relatively short roots, that almost look like fine pieces of thread. The purpose of these roots are simply to anchor the plant into its growing medium, but its not uncommon for the plants to become dislodged and fall out of the medium. If this happens, just gently place it back on the surface of the medium and the roots will begin to regrow down into the medium.
- They are bog plants, and hence we try to recreate the conditions of their natural environment. We bottom water to the point that the plant’s medium is sitting in 1 – 2 cm water, and then do not water again until the medium has partially dried out.
Please note that Pinguicula can become dormant in cold weather. Their leaves shrink and become non-carnivorous. We keep them in a heated room, so they will be in their ‘active’ carnivorous state upon arrival. Plants pictured are a representation of the plant you will receive. These plants are not currently flowering, but are in their active carnivorous phase.
We ship our Pinguicula in their pots. The growing medium we use for our Pinguicula is perlite topped with sphagnum moss.