Why are there no butterflies in my greenhouse?
This is my second save with Hearthfire, and with the greenhouse in two houses. I never had any issues with being able to produce and harvest glow bugs and butterflies.
In the greenhouse at Lake View, I have tundra cotton and lavender growing and flowering, I have all planters full. I have built everything aside from a few animal trophies and I have two bee hives, hanging moss and bird's nest happening.
So why no butterflies? I want to use them for their powerful alchemical properties, and not to mention it is pretty cool walking into your greenhouse to see the air thick with flying critters.
Best Answer
First of all, to confirm LENOs comment, the Greenhouse is suppose to spawn butterflies.
To quote the Elder Scrolls Wikia page on the Greenhouse:
Once certain furnishings have been added, hanging moss will appear on the timber beams, as well as: bird nests, butterflies, torchbugs, beehives, and bees.
That said, there appears to be several reports, detailing different requirements to spawn butterflies.
I found all reports listed within this GameFAQ forum post, but here are the different findings:
Butterflies will only spawn during daylight - This is reliable. Butterflies spawn during the day, while Moths spawn at night.
Butterflies will take several days to spawn - The user reports 3 days. This is in-game time, so try sleeping for a day, three times.
Butterflies spawn depending on what plants have been planted - a few users report this to not be the case, but one user has a particular experience:
Overlord_Meril says: "I've got two greenhouses, one has purple mountain flowers and wheat. Lots of bees and butterflies show up. But none show up in my other greenhouse that grows imp stool, canis root & mora tapinella."
Butterflies spawn depending on what furniture you have - There were reports that removing certain furniture would have an effect. While this has been disproven, the original requirement behind spawning butterflies is to furnish the Greenhouse.
It is entirely possible you have ran into a bug preventing the butterflies from spawning. If all else fails, it might be worth removing some of the furnishings. Once removed, add it back in. If you "reset" the spawn trigger, you can sometimes get around weird bugs.
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Answer 2
You have to have some kind of flowers planted.
I was going to use my greenhouse for all Scaly/Mora/Creep Clusters but I had no Scaly's to plant.
So I threw in a few mountain flowers and dragons tongues.
Butterfly's were everywhere.
I took the flowers out to plant Scaly's, giving me all fungus and Creep (plus 2 snowberry plants by the doors)
No butterfly's for the next 5-10 times I visited home (all days apart, all different time of days)
I waited for 10am, still no Butterfly's.
I took out 1 Mora and 1 Scaly and planted a blue mountain flower and a drangontongue.
Boom. Butterfly's everywhere.
The plants 100% matter. I think you need at least 1-2 flowering plants. If you go all fungus they won't come, atleast wouldn't for me
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