"Cycads are plants of exceptional rarity and stark beauty, surviving more than 250 million years and forming an intimate part of life on earth. They have become popular garden plants but I believe that no cycad in cultivation can compete with the natural beauty of a cycad in the wild where the plant, landscape, and weather come together in an ever-changing dynamic. This means that conserving wild cycads is also about conserving wild places.
In this series of photographs, I wanted to provide an intimate encounter with cycads, to enable the viewer to share places and moments that capture the raw beauty of cycads and to inspire an appreciation of wild plants in wild places. Some of the photographs are of places that now no-one can see, plants that are extinct or places that are no more. I want these images to remind us of the wild beauty that still exists and of what we lose when extinction happens."
John Donaldson
Wild Portraits is offering limited edition prints of these photographs. The prints, roughly 60 x 40 cm dimensions* (differs according to photograph), are printed on fine art canvas using a high resolution printer with special pigment based archival inks (90 year print life). Each print is signed, named, and numbered by hand. A portion of the profits from each sale will be donated to the IUCN Cycad Specialist Group to support cycad conservation actions in Africa.