This is just an open call to see if any of our members here have a variety of white flowering sempervivum arachnoideum and would be willing to share. I'd be happy to compensate for a clone or more of any of these cultivars:
'Early Winter'
'Baby Boo'
'Albion'
'Albasten No. 1'
'Albasten No. 2'
arachnoideum 'Album'
'Morgentau' (which is not a pure arachnoideum, but has cream colored blossoms from a cross to a yellow flowering grandiflorum)

If anyone has or knows of other varieties of white blooming arachnoideums I'd be very interested to chat about it. Been researching these lately and can't seem to find any other's with white flowers.

Feel free to treemail me if you'd like to set up a sale or trade. I'll make it worth your while!
-Sol Z

None in my collection Sol.

Sol,

In general the white flowered ones are weak growers. I had one for a while here in Oregon but it couldn't take our winters.

Kevin

I experienced the same thing Kevin.

Lynn/Kevin,
I wonder if the more modern varieties would fair any better than the older one's you have had. Unfortunately most arachnoideums (and velvets for that matter) seem to be less sturdy in our climate.

Sounds like there may not be any white bloomers left in the US. I'd love to use some to see a wider variety of colors in the blooms of my velvet/cobweb seedlings (which are derived from nearly all pink flowering types). V. Schara did some very interesting things with bloom colors and I'd encourage anyone with the time to spare to read through some of the notes he's made on the plants I've mentioned here and their subsequent hybrids with other colored blooming types in the sempervivum-liste.de. He produced some very distinct bloom colors in his work with these plants including cream tones, multitonal mauves, center stripes and red tipped blooms. It was a fun read and some of the photos were jaw-droppingly beautiful, I was left envious.

For what it's worth, I managed to successfully integrate a number of yellow flowering hybrids into my gene pool last year, a few of these I crossed with 'Gold Nugget' (which has white blooms with pink centers), and so far I've successfully raised raised seedlings from these crosses. What a treat it'd be to have a plant which is not only vivid but also produces unique blooms.
-Sol

Sol,

Not to dampen your enthusiasm but MANY people pull of the blooming rosettes before they ever bloom. Frankly I'm not a big fan either but of course it's the only way to get new ones outside of rare mutations.

In MA I did grow a white flowered arachnoideum and it bloomed ONCE with 6 flowers. The same plant out here lasted a year and then died. Not the best track record!

I'm betting even the Germans will have problems with them as Global Warming goes on.

Kevin

Kevin,

We'll they're certainly not irises! Simultaneously breading for the some of the most beautiful blooms of any genus probably does make the semp bloom seem awfully homely by comparison.

I specifically find the shorter arachnoideum blooms with fewer flowers to be visually charming when left amidst the colony. Because of this I think it's particularly important to focus on the blooms in the case of these types, and perhaps the grandiflorum's which tend to bloom more frequently and have a noticeably sweet aroma.

Lot's of mention of drought in Europe, we to are seeing some disturbing heat waves and forest fires here. If these trends continue, whether or not white flowering arachnoideums survive without a cold frame or a shade cloth could be the least of our worries!
Have you had luck with 'Shampoo'? I bet if that one's alright in our climate it's sibling 'Baby Boo' probably does as well, and the next generation seedling 'Early Winter' is probably even stronger.

Of course you're right in that several gardeners lop bloom heads. In the case of 'Pacific Plumb Fuzzy' which grows a spindly foot-and-a-half long top-heavy ground-trailing bloom stalk from a medium/small sized rosette; their not missing anything, but in the case of the weeping willow shaped stalk with tan/mauve blooms formed by 'Comet' or the stout stalks and large flowered blooms of 'Pacific Magic Night' I do think their missing the finale of the show. My thought's are that most semp blooms are ugly simply because they have not been bred to be beautiful.

-Sol