Thanks everybody, I'll be watching them closely to see how they fare. As to how often albinos appear, I have no idea--this is my first experience with adenium seeds and out of roughly 120 to140 seeds sown--I can't remember how many exactly offhand--I got these two albinos. And the majority of my seeds are arabicums and Thai socos, only a handful--perhaps 15 or 20, are obesums. From what I've read, both here and on other adenium forums, they virtually all die because they have no green coloration and therefore cannot perform photosynthesis. I have seen albino seedlings grafted onto small branches of other adeniums, all with vee grafts--no flat grafts. These appear to be successful though I don't know the actual percentage. Lastly, here's a more overhead view of the KHZ albino that shows the three cotyledon leaves fused together as one--though it's not easy to see because they're so pale yellow and the camera flash kind of washes it out. Mike in MN

Let me help out here, I wrote out several different ways to do this and don't have my journal from last year on my desk. What the deal is so everyone knows, the reason I asked for one to be started to over winter outside if at all possible is due to what was used and past seedpods that we saw a problem with germination. The Mother, Datura Missouri Marble was from a tissue culture as was the Father, Brugmansia Reverse Variegated. The first year we producted the Albino, that was again Mother, Datura Missouri Marble with Father, B. Shorty's variegated. We only placed one seed at the D. MM feet and we saw the Albino seed winter and product a plant. This is why the request to plant now. Last years pods we share, only 2 viable seeds made it as a plant of 12" before they were killed by someone that decided to spray to help out, no photos of this. I am looking in the disks for the photos of the seedlings and will put them on the website so you can see them, they were so cute. I have one photo of the first Albino Datmansia on the site now. According to what I have learned tissue cultures can take more cold??

Susan, I found the cat on a cloudy day, so it occurred to me that maybe it stayed hidden when the sun was out - the passionvines it was on are real thick, and it could have easily hidden there. I brought it in to raise myself in one of the cages on my covered and always shady porch, so there was no sunlight there. I've put it in sunlight to make its picture a few times, but it was late in the afternoon, and I didn't keep it out for long, so I really don't know if it's light sensitive, but I suspect it is. It's been eating a lot today, so it'll probably molt one more time, them pupate. Of course, gulf frits don't stay in their chrysalis very long, so it shouldn't be too long before I get a butterfly. I'll post another picture of it, if it changes after the next molt. Sherry

It may be a true albino, in which case you saw something very rare. But I used to see white fallow deer all the time out in Pt. Reyes and thought they were albinos at first. Here's a rather long explanation of the difference. ++++ The tales had circulated within the hunting community for decades: apparitions among deer, with pink eyes and snow-white bodies. Nature's anomalies, so rare that some wildlife biologists are unfamiliar with them, yet so revered by American Indian coastal tribes of Northern California that dances were choreographed in their image. ``They have absolutely no color other than white and occur naturally at some low rate. They look like ghosts, especially at night,'' said Sonke Mastrup, a biologist with the Department of Fish and Game's deer program in Sacramento. Mastrup had heard the same stories for years but didn't see his first albino deer until the early 1990s, while trapping pheasants for relocation at Delevan National Wildlife Refuge, east of Maxwell in the Sacramento Valley's Colusa County. ``We were using these big spotlights to pin the pheasants, when I noticed four deer. One of them stood out. It had a ghostly-glare look,'' Mastrup said. ``It startled me when I saw it. Instantly I recognized it as an albino, a true albino buck in a group of bucks.'' The biologist has since spoken with several refuge managers who have had similar experiences. Albino mule deer have also been spotted at Gray Lodge Wildlife Area east of Delevan, on Rank Island in the San Joaquin River Ecological Reserve near Fresno and at other sites where deer tend to be separated from larger populations. Fresno's John Buada, a natural resource manager for a sand and gravel mining operation, has photographed two albino deer on Rank Island. ``The more I talked to other people, the more I found how extremely rare albino deer are,'' said Buada, who snapped a shot of a yearling albino with its mother in the spring of 1995 and a fawn - presumably the first white muley's sibling - a year later. ``And the fact that there are two of them here is rarer yet. That gene is in the herd. I felt real fortunate to see them and photograph both.'' Scientists explain that albinism happens most often within inbred inbred animal populations, Mastrup said. The Delevan deer, for example, came from an area surrounded by agriculture, where there are few deer moving in and out of the isolated population, resulting in a reduced gene flow. ``One of the genetic consequences can be an increase in albinism because that tends to favor recessive traits,'' the biologist said. ``Whether you see it in your lifetime is another story,'' said Ron Jurek, a DFG wildlife biologist and endangered species specialist in Sacramento. Albino or partial albino red-tailed hawks, blackbirds and robins are seen with some frequency. But so uncommon are albino muleys that Indians in the Humboldt County area paid them particular significance and performed the White Deer Dance, Jurek noted. The ceremonial hides were passed down for generations. ``Indian lore is full of references to white deer, and all that is is an albino deer,'' Mastrup echoed. It is the West's version of the great white buffalo, he said. Albino mule deer have been confused with white fallow deer that reside in Point Reyes National Seashore Point Reyes National Seashore. Native to the Mediterranean countries of Europe, the fallow deer appears in a range of shades, from its wild coloration of white-spotted brown to black to white. The entire Ukiah herd is white. But the frosty fallows don't have pink eyes like albino mule deer, whose peepers are pink because they have no pigmentation to prevent blood vessels from showing through, Jurek said. The rarity of white mule deer is compounded by the fact that along with the albino gene come additional recessive traits that adversely affect the animal's health. Plus, the lack of pigmentation is more noticeable to predators. +++++ Pt Reyes fallow deer