I wish I knew how they were getting all those amazing mutants in Japan. Ya reckon someone must be using mutagens or radiation to get some of those?
Look at some of the cacti that this fella has/had for sale...
http://www.h6.dion.ne.jp/~saisen/newpage4.html
http://www.h6.dion.ne.jp/~saisen/newpage3.html
http://www.h6.dion.ne.jp/~saisen/newpage1.html
He doesn't do any paperwork or anything on them, so it would be near impossible to get some of those here

Mr. Saeki of owner of Saisenen have developed cultivers by himself and also collected quite many cultivars developed by Japanese hobby cactus collectors.
He does not use any special technics such as mutagenes or radiation.

He has exported these cultivars to Asian and European countries.
Since CITES 1 plants are impossible to export to overseas, he has categorised these cultivars as hybrids plants.
Roots of grafting stock are also cut off completely for the exporting.

He can make necessary English documents but I am not sure Australian law can accept importing cactus plants or not.

Hanazono

Even if they can never get to here, they are still some amazing cacti, and it would be great to see if the cacti growers out here could come up with some amazing cultivars of their own

Back to the original topic of this thread, the red seedling has slowly turned green, and is indistinguishable from the seedlings that were the normal green.

I think you can recognize albino seedlings very soon just after germination.
You have to wait 4~5 months to select well balanced variegated seedlings.
I sowed asterias seeds in November last year and grafted recently after selected 5 of well balanced variegated seedlings.
The photo is one of (variegated asterias x super kabutos).

Very nice! Now, is there any difference between what causes variegated seedlings and albino seedlings? Or is it the same, only in an albino, the lack of chlorophyll is 100%?

IXOXI

I think the cause of both variegated and albino seedlings are same.
The degree of chlorophill content shows differntly.
The albino is nil of chlorophyll.

You can keep albino cacti by grafting but their lives are very short generally.

I had a large batch of Loph seeds, collected from about 40 of my friends plants, many were of mixed parentage, as he just takes one paintbrush, and goes around to every visible flower. One of the seedlings was extremely pale. The seedlings that I planted are now over a month old, and while all the others are are emerald green or deeper, this one is still barely green at all. I took a photo of it a few days ago next to one of it's fellow batch of baby lophs. The green one is among the lighter green of the 'normal' ones. I think the whitish one might be albino, but it is definitely growing.

IXOXI

Almost all Lophophora williamsii are self-fertile and diffusa is not.
Do you means these scions are diffusa or williamsii x diffusa?

One of your scions is pale.
I have never seen Lophophora albino but Astrophytum albino is paler than your scion.

I said the grafted albino was very short life but it meant 4~5years of life.

It looks a lot more white than the photo shows. It might be showing green reflections from the plants around it.

These Lophs could be any mix of hybrid that is fertile. My friend uses one paintbrush and brushes every open Lophophora flower that is open. He does not clean the brush between pollinations. He has over 40 Lophs, many varieties, so the seeds that germinate will be a big variety. From this last set of thousands of seeds planted, the pale seedling is the only one. The rest are all bright or deep green, like the one on the left.

I won't know what kind they are until they get more mature, and even then most of them will likely be hybrids of some sort. I'll keep pics posted here as the pale one grows.

Both the red seedling, and the pale loph have turned the proper green colours. I did get a variegated astrophytum seedling, that had distinctive stripes on it, but some rotten little pest ate it right off the root stock last night along with nearly 20 other grafteds.

Surely you can produce some variegated cacti on your own.
Simply select every seedling that looks a little differently and graft it.
And cross some cacti that dont suit. For example Ferocactus and Leuchtenbergia.

I have been doing just that. Some of the seedlings that were eaten last night were from the unusual ones that I had found in batches of regular seedlings. Nice job on those that you have there - how long have you been working on them to get those?

What a great range of variegated grafts Torro.
I was going to ask if they are all yours and then I click on your website link and wow so many variegated cacti absolutely stunning.

My first graft I did was a trich that was very pale/albino but as it grew it reverted to only having a very small amount of variegation. I have recently grafted a near white loph that looks like it is going to be variegated just unsure how much at the moment as it is starting to show some green on the new growth.

IXOXI I am sorry to here about you loosing so many grafts it must be very frustrating.

Cheers
Midlife

IXOXI : I had the idea of producing/creating/finding one variegated seedling about 3 years ago.
After diving in to this topic there came out some more...

Not all of the variegated ones on my website are created or collected by me myself.
We are 3 guys who collect them and I also try to create them.

midlife crisis : You could try to obtain a scion from a variegated part of the trich.
The variegated cacti in the pictures above all "created" by me.