The thing about Judd Kirkel Welwitch is he loves all things about nature and more specifically, he loves all things wild flowers. In fact, this horticulturalist loves wild flowers so much that he spends most of his time not only taking pictures of these plants but researching them so he can better understand them.
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He gets to share this wealth of research and photography with the many people he comes across. Most recently he held a talk at the Roosevelt Park Recreational Centre, to members of the Transvaal Horticultural Society, on most of the orchids found across the whole of South Africa. He said hosting such talks within the community is important as he gets to share with people how amazing the nature around them is. “These are free gifts bestowed onto us and when you look how we are surrounded by two ocean currents – one warm and another cold – there isn’t a country out there that has as much as we have when it comes to nature.”
He was drawn to wild flower photography due to the overwhelming sense of peace he finds among them. “I fell in love with the fact that you find these beautiful gems on the Earth and all you have to do is find them,” he described.
Welwitch started his photography journey in his early 20s and for him, capturing the essence of these wild flowers meant a degree of ownership in a way. Acquiring this ownership not through digging up this plant but rather through its photograph.
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One of his most loved regions is the Northern Cape. “It’s west coast is our most underexplored, underdeveloped, region. It has a lot of wide areas that are mystical and magical.” He explained that KwaZulu-Natal has a lot of amazing plants and natural homelands where people live close to nature. For him, the grassveld stole his heart as he finds it truly exciting. Although the fynbos is beautiful, he says it is not the only region worth notable attention as there is a whole host of biomes and habitats that are equally as amazing.
His big question is ‘Who is watching the planet?’ The horticulturalist says our country’s lesson to the world is the conservation of our regions, as we can set the example. “Maybe one day we will be able to harness the natural beauty of the country when all others countries have destroyed their natural habitats.”
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