Sundews grow on every continent except Antarctica, but the vast majority of species are concentrated in the Southern Hemisphere. Of the nearly 200 known species in the genus Drosera, over 80 are found in Australia alone, with additional hotspots in South Africa and South America. A handful of widespread species cover huge ranges across North America, Europe, and Asia.
Australia: The Global Center of Sundew Diversity
Southwestern Australia is home to more sundew species than any other place on Earth. This single region accounts for nearly half the world’s known species, including entire groups found nowhere else. Pygmy sundews, named for their tiny size (some no larger than a coin), are almost entirely restricted to the southwestern tip of Western Australia. Tuberous sundews, which survive dry summers by retreating into underground tubers, are also uniquely Australian.
The combination of ancient, nutrient-poor soils and a Mediterranean climate with wet winters and dry summers created the perfect conditions for sundews to diversify over millions of years. Many Australian species occupy extremely small ranges, sometimes limited to a single hillside or seasonal wetland.
South Africa and the Cape Region
Africa hosts over 30 sundew species, but most of that diversity is packed into the southern half of the continent. South Africa’s Western Cape and Eastern Cape provinces are the core range, where species like the well-known cape sundew grow in marshes, along streams, and in permanently damp areas within the fynbos shrubland. Northern Africa, by contrast, has very few species.
The Cape Floristic Region shares something important with southwestern Australia: ancient, acidic, nutrient-starved soils. That pattern repeats across nearly every sundew hotspot worldwide. Where the ground offers almost no nitrogen, sundews thrive because their insect-trapping leaves give them a nutritional edge over plants that depend on roots alone.
South America: Highlands and Tabletop Mountains
South America is home to roughly 30 species, with the greatest concentration in the rocky highland plateaus of eastern Brazil known as campos rupestres. These high-altitude grasslands sit on ancient quartzite and sandstone, and they harbor 23 sundew species, 13 of which grow nowhere else on Earth.
Further north, the flat-topped mountains called tepuis in Venezuela and Guyana support their own unique sundews at elevations above 2,000 meters. Species like Drosera solaris and Drosera kaieteurensis live in cloud forest clearings and highland savannas on these isolated summits. At least eight sundew species have been recorded from Guyana, all of them also occurring in the Venezuelan highlands. The isolation of each tepui has driven the evolution of species found on just one or two mountaintops.
North America: Bogs, Fens, and Coastal Plains
North America has fewer than ten native sundew species, but the most common one, the roundleaf sundew, covers an enormous range. It stretches from Greenland and Alaska south along the Pacific coast to California and across the eastern half of the continent from Nova Scotia down to Georgia, Florida, and Alabama. Two other widespread species, the English sundew and the spoonleaf sundew, overlap with much of that range.
In the northern states and Canada, sundews typically grow on floating mats of sphagnum moss in bogs that formed around glacial lakes. In the Appalachians from Pennsylvania to Alabama, they’re more likely found around springheads, seeps, and stream edges. The southeastern coastal plain supports both sphagnum bogs and grass-sedge bogs. In the Pacific Northwest, sundew bogs follow streams and occasionally appear around high-elevation seeps in the northern Rocky Mountains. A few populations survive in surprisingly isolated spots: one bog in Gunnison County, Colorado, and one in Bottineau County, North Dakota.
One notable outlier is a population of the English sundew in Hawaii, which behaves like a tropical plant and grows year-round without the winter dormancy its mainland relatives require.
Europe and Asia
Europe and Asia share three main species with North America: the roundleaf sundew, the English sundew, and the spoonleaf sundew. All three grow in bogs, fens, and wet moors with sandy, acidic soil. The roundleaf sundew is the most common across western Europe, where it produces small white or pinkish flowers and bears round, flat leaves covered in sticky reddish hairs.
These species range across a broad east-west band from the British Isles through Scandinavia, the Baltic states, and into Siberia and northern Japan. Their habitats mirror those in North America: waterlogged peatlands where the soil is too acidic and nutrient-poor for most competing plants.
What All Sundew Habitats Have in Common
Despite spanning six continents and climates from subarctic bogs to tropical mountaintops, sundew habitats share a consistent set of conditions. The soil is almost always acidic, waterlogged, and extremely low in nitrogen. Peat bogs, sandy seeps, and ancient quartzite plateaus all fit that profile. Sundews evolved their sticky, insect-trapping leaves precisely because they couldn’t get enough nutrition through their roots. In richer soils, faster-growing plants shade them out.
This dependence on very specific conditions makes sundews vulnerable. Wetland drainage for agriculture, peat harvesting, and changes to groundwater levels have destroyed sundew habitat across much of Europe and beyond. In Poland’s Łęczna-Włodawa Lake District, losses in peat bog vegetation are estimated at 70 to 80 percent, and groundwater levels have dropped by nearly a meter or more over the past 50 years. Drainage and nutrient runoff from farmland trigger the growth of shrubs and reeds that crowd out small, light-dependent plants like sundews. The pattern is similar across boreal and temperate regions worldwide: when peatlands dry out, sundews disappear.
Temperate, Tropical, and Tuberous Types
Where a sundew lives determines how it handles seasons. Temperate species in North America and Europe go dormant for winter, forming tight buds called hibernacula and staying inactive for six to nine months depending on latitude. The further north the population, the longer the dormancy. Tropical species, concentrated in northern South America, Southeast Asia, and parts of Australia, grow year-round with no resting period. Tuberous sundews in Australia take the opposite approach, going dormant during the hot, dry summer and emerging when autumn rains begin.
Some species blur these categories. South American forms of the spoonleaf sundew from Cuba and Venezuela skip dormancy entirely, even when exposed to freezing temperatures, making them behave like tropical plants despite belonging to a species that’s otherwise temperate. These variations reflect how widely sundews have adapted to local climates across their global range.