Introduction

 

The U.S. Embassy in Beirut honors Dr. Nisrine Machaka-Houri, Plant Researcher. Dr. Machaka-Houri is not only an environmentalist at heart but a very accomplished plant researcher with over 14 years of experience. She received her PhD in ecology from the University of Reading, United Kingdom while a mother of three. She did her Postdoctoral studies at U.C. Berkeley where she received the Heckard Endowment Fund, which allowed her to conduct research on plants. Dr. Machaka-Houri has served as a consultant for many international organizations and has recently received a grant from the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund to publish a new flower photographic guide for Wild Flowers of Lebanon. She continues to be a mentor and role model to numerous students aspiring for quality higher education.

 

    Lebanon’s diversity in topography and climate lead to a wide variety of its wild life. It is estimated that Lebanon has more than 2600 species of wild flowers. With the help of my husband, Dr Ahmad Houri, I have been studying and documenting Lebanese flora for the past ten years. We published the first Field Guide to Wildflowers of Lebanon in 2001 with 240 color photographs of different plants.  This guide was meant to be a companion for all those interested in nature walking and a useful pocket guide for students of ecology and botany.  It also serves to enlighten people to the variety and importance of the Lebanese Flora. Later on, it was supported by a searchable database with all the flowers available in the guide.  Our work did not stop there. My passion to nature and wild flowers kept me going in investigating flora of Lebanon all year round. In 2008 we published the second volume of the Photographic Guide to Wild flowers of Lebanon which has another 400 photographs of wild plants from Lebanon. Our goal is to help nature lovers appreciate and understand the flora around them.

 

    In order to make my work accessible by people from all over the world, I decided to build this website. This way I can share the beauty of our country’s nature and wild life with the world. This website will help people get acquainted with our nature by looking at the photo gallery of wild flowers and various landscapes from Lebanon. They can read my CV and get to know my work. They can read more about our guides and buy them online if interested. All comments, suggestions and contribution would be greatly appreciated and hopefully incorporated in future editions or volumes. These are possible through the “contact me” page.

 

    To all those who will be using the books or the website, we wish you the best of times in nature. We hope that with the aid of these resources we will get to a higher level of appreciation and enjoyment of nature.

Please remember, when in nature, take nothing but pictures and leave nothing but footsteps.

 

Nisrine Machaka Houri