Dicotyledons of the Otways by Professor John Keith

Thanks to all trails.com

Title: Dicotyledons of the Otways

Title: Professor John Keith

Publisher: Not known 

Source book: Dead Man’s Chest by Kerry Greenwood (Phryne Fisher #18)

First mentioned in Away With the Fairies (#11) when John Keith, Emeritus Professor of Botany at Melbourne University, tells Miss Phryne Fisher about the book that he’s writing; Dicotyledons of the Otways pops up again in Dead Man’s Chest. Now we learn that Professor Keith’s life’s work has been published (hurrah), and is on the bookshelf of Mr Thomas’s well-appointed Queenscliff house.

The Otway Forest is a National Park located in the Barton South West region of Victoria, Australia. It looks very pretty. And dicotyledons, a word Miss Fisher has to look up when she gets home, are plants where the seed has two embryonic leaves. I do remember studying cotyledons in Biology at school… but I don’t remember dicotyledons. And anyway that doesn’t really help me understand why the dicotyledons of the Otway Forest are quite so important to Professor Keith. However, it’s obvious that shrubby and herbaceous dicotyledons are a big thing in the Otways.