Now that they're inside, I'd leave them in. They might be shocked right now, hence the lack of dew. Can you manually remove the cottonwood. I'd hate to suggest submerging the plants because I don't know if the plants can take it or whether the cotton would float. Start simple and see what happens

I have picked off some of the fluff but it tears so easily that the parts that have contacted the glue stays behind. I think I will wait a couple more days and then pour a soft stream of water over one portion of the sundew and see how that works. When I said I was thinking of sumberging it I did not mean for days. I was thinking 10 or 15 minutes.
I wish i had taken a pic before cleaning it.

Could you get tweezers and try and pick it off, however i dont know if thats what you did, or if thats possible, but could you let it stay? im sure it looks bad but would it really harm them? i mean how could this stuff be around still if they cant be misted and junk sticking to them in nature?

My experience is that you are going to have to wait for the plants to recover by themselves.

When I moved, I tried to be careful from keeping my indoor plants from suffering any damage during transit from here to there. I set them in their new place and everything going smooth, until I hit some dusty books and the dust settled on my plants.

Suffice to say, my pings and sundew were covered with dust and bits of dust bunnies. It has happened before when they get covered with lint or something. The problem is that on sundews, it causes the tentacles to dry up and the mucilage of the tentacles turn into little wads of dusts. While the pings, the leaf's trapping surface dried up but the leaf itself didn't die.

Either way, the traps of the plants are damaged, they won't die but it will give them a wilted dry look. Dunking them under water won't do much of a difference since the lint or dust get really stuck on the tentacles. The mucilage isn't really water soluble and may simply form a slimy film on the leaf surface. There is nothing much you can do about it but wait for the plants to sprout new leaves. I advice just to clear up the pot of cottonwood so it wont contaminate the new leaves that will sprout and just let the plants recover, you may end up damaging any new leaf it is sprouting trying to clean up the damaged traps.

Just be patient and they will recover.

Good Luck!

Thanks for the input. I guess this is part of my learning curve. Now I know that I need a screen cover for them next spring.

Scott H