The intensity of the colors often varies with the season or the light level. Very rarely does one find a clone with strongly contrasting light and dark tissue. Unfortunately, after propagating these nicely colored variegates, the propagules often end up either completely normal or solid yellow rather than maintaining the mottled pattern of the original plant Hybridization offers the best hope for producing variegates. As anyone who has raised hybrids of Astrophytum or Ferocactus has observed, an abnormally large number of variegates appear among the seedlings, perhaps 1 for each 100 seedlings. Ariocarpus hybrids share this tendency, and the percentage of variegates increases with each successive generation.
Variegated growth can also appear spontaneously on previously normal plants.
Hybrid Ariocarpus Hybridizing Ariocarpus is quite easy, provided the parents flower at the same time. The progeny resulting from crosses between pure species are an amalgam of the parents' features, flower color, tubercle shape and texture, areole placement, mature size and growth rate. While no Ariocarpus hybrids are particularly common, perhaps the best known is A. kotschoubeyanus x A . This hybrid combines the nicest features of both parents the tightly arranged tubercles of A. kotschoubeyanus with the rough surface of A. fissuratus . Hybrids of A. scaphirostris , oddly enough, are more common than might be expected from this rare species.