Thanks very much all for these most helpful answers, much appreciated! Regarding the 2nd (and easier) part of the question, as you suspected this is true. In the preprint http://front.math.ucdavis.edu/1111.4028 Katharine Turner and I were needing this for some work on harmonic maps, and the form of the statement we prove there is below. It seems like something that would be known to folks working in this area, but we couldn't find a reference.


 Every involution of the extended Dynkin diagram for a simple complex Lie algebra $\mathfrak {g} ^\mathbb {C} $ is induced by a Cartan involution of a real form of $\mathfrak {g} ^\mathbb {C} $.

 More precisely, let $\mathfrak {g}^\mathbb {C} $ be a simple complex Lie algebra with Cartan subalgebra $\mathfrak {t} ^\mathbb {C} $ and choose simple roots $\alpha_1,\ldots,\alpha_N $ for the root system $\Delta (\mathfrak {g} ^\mathbb {C},\mathfrak {t} ^\mathbb {C}) $. Given an involution $\pi $ of the extended Dynkin diagram for $\Delta $,
there exists  a real form $\mathfrak {g} $ of $\mathfrak {g} ^\mathbb {C} $ and a Cartan involution $\theta $ of $\mathfrak {g} $ preserving $\mathfrak {t} =\mathfrak {g}\cap\mathfrak {t} ^\mathbb {C} $ such that $\theta $ induces $\pi $ and $\mathfrak {t} $ is a real form of $\mathfrak {t} ^\mathbb {C} $. The Coxeter automorphism $\sigma $ determined by $\alpha_1,\ldots,\alpha_N $ preserves the real form $\mathfrak {g} $.