Johannes Jacobus Adriaan van der Walt (1938–2003), South African botanist.
South African botanist Johannes Jacobus Adriaan Van der Walt was a Pelargonium specialist. Born in Krugersdorp, he joined the Botany Department at the University of Stellenbosch as Professor in 1979. Prior to this he taught biology for the Transvaal Education Department while working towards his MSc degree at the University of Pretoria. He also lectured for one year at the University of Zululand near Empangeni.
Van der Walt's interest in pelargoniums came about through a meeting with the botanical artist Ellaphie Ward-Hilhorst, who expressed to him her ambition to paint every species of the genus. A long-term collaboration ensued, resulting in Pelargoniums of Southern Africa, published in three volumes (the last two with P.J. Vorster).
Van der Walt travelled extensively throughout South Africa collecting pelargoniums, both as herbarium specimens and as live plants to be grown in the Stellenbosch botanical garden. He published many papers and popular literature on pelargoniums and organised the International Geraniaceae Symposium at Stellenbosch in 1990. He was twice winner of the Compton Prize for the best article in the Journal of South African Botany (in 1988, with Loretta van Zyl, and 1993). He also won the Havenga Prize for Biological Sciences from the South African Academy for Science and the Arts in 2000.
In 1998 Van der Walt was diagnosed with cancer and took early retirement, settling in Kleinmond, where he kept bees and planted an indigenous garden. He died five years later
Van der Walt's interest in pelargoniums came about through a meeting with the botanical artist Ellaphie Ward-Hilhorst, who expressed to him her ambition to paint every species of the genus. A long-term collaboration ensued, resulting in Pelargoniums of Southern Africa, published in three volumes (the last two with P.J. Vorster).
Van der Walt travelled extensively throughout South Africa collecting pelargoniums, both as herbarium specimens and as live plants to be grown in the Stellenbosch botanical garden. He published many papers and popular literature on pelargoniums and organised the International Geraniaceae Symposium at Stellenbosch in 1990. He was twice winner of the Compton Prize for the best article in the Journal of South African Botany (in 1988, with Loretta van Zyl, and 1993). He also won the Havenga Prize for Biological Sciences from the South African Academy for Science and the Arts in 2000.
In 1998 Van der Walt was diagnosed with cancer and took early retirement, settling in Kleinmond, where he kept bees and planted an indigenous garden. He died five years later
IPNI standard form: J.J.A.van der Walt
