The search for lost habitats

30 years of exploring for rare and endangered plants.

Plot

What started out as a visit to a bog near Erie, Pennsylvania, to search for the arethusa orchid, rare and in danger of extinction, ended up a quarter of a century later as thirty magazine articles (enough material for two books) concerned with the importance of saving our native plants by saving their habitats.This conservation story, The Search for Lost Habitats, illustrated with over 450 colored slides taken by the author and friends, follows him as he explores the flora of the Lake Erie dunes, the fens and bogs of northeast Ohio, and the prairies and rocky outcrops near the Ohio River, among many other habitat types.Soon he branches out to include the other states around the upper Great Lakes, as well as the province of Ontario in Canada, with chapters on the limestone barrens of Manitoulin Island, southeast Minnesota's "Driftless Area," river bottoms in northern Illinois, and many other locations.Occasionally the author studies a single plant family, such as orchids, gentians, and mallows, and describes his adventures in finding the rare habitats that these colorful species require.Although written in a journalistic, easy-to-read, and often humorous style that avoids much of the technical botanical terminology of textbooks and scholarly articles, these first-person narratives are factual and accurate. They will appeal to home gardeners, professional botanists and naturalists, and anyone in between who enjoys a good yarn about adventures in the natural world.Perry Peskin has enjoyed the natural world ever since elementary-school days, when he tramped through the woods covering the hills behind his native Cumberland, in western Maryland. Later he explored the trails through the park system of his second home, the metropolitan area of Cleveland, Ohio.Choosing biology as a minor at Cleveland's Case Western Reserve University, Peskin went on many three-hour field trips in his botany classes through habitats he never knew existed--a practice continued throughout a lifetime.As a high-school English teacher, in several schools in and around Cleveland, he encouraged his students to write descriptive essays by going on three-hour walks on their own and then writing about their experiences and feelings.Even before retirement, he started writing about the natural world in first-person essays that reflected the viewpoint of an inquiring reporter rather than a scholar. Seventeen articles on Ohio and neighboring states, including Ontario, Canada, make up the contents of the present book, starting with a 1975 visit to a Pennsylvania bog and ending with a 2004 field trip to Kentucky's Natural Bridge State Park, sponsored by the Cleveland Metropolitan Park District.Another 15 articles are ready to be combined into Book 2, which will cover various parts of North America from Alaska to Costa Rica.Retired from teaching for 23 years, Peskin still makes his home in the Cleveland area. He and his wife Carolyn have gone on many eco-tours throughout North and parts of South America as well as England and France, observing habitats as varied as the Arctic tundra, the deserts of the Southwest, and the tropical rain forests.