Abstract: By William C. Dickison. 544 pages. San Diego, CA, USA: Harcourt Academic Press, 2000. $69.95 h/b. ISBN 0 12 215170 4 These days, when molecular biology, and functional genomics in particular, seem to dominate the whole of plant biology, and when traditional botanical areas no longer form part of most plant science degrees, any new book on plant anatomy is unlikely to be regarded as particularly topical. However, the stock in trade of molecular biologists is mutants, whether natural or induced, or novel genotypes resulting from expression of transgenes. These often display modifications in developmental processes, which result in morphological and anatomical modifications to the body of the plant. An understanding of plant anatomy and how this integrates with physiology, development, ecology, genetics and systematics should therefore be highly pertinent and this book provides an up-to-date account of current thinking in these areas. The first four chapters cover the anatomical foundation of the primary and secondary plant body, providing an overview of organization and structure; subsequent chapters deal with specialized topics in some detail, including evolutionary, physiological and ecological plant anatomy and macromorphology. The author gives numerous interesting examples in which studies of applied plant anatomy have resulted in economic gains, such as in crop breeding, wood utilization and animal nutrition. He also gives the anatomical basis of commercially valuable compounds that occur in herb, spice and drug plants. The final chapters are used to illustrate the integration of plant anatomy with a range of diverse areas such as forensic science, archaeology, anthropology, climatology and the arts. The text is easy to read because of the minimal use of technical terminology and there is also a short but valuable glossary to help where this is unavoidable. References for further reading at the end of each chapter have been restricted to key recent works and to citations to classical textbooks and reviews, and information is provided on a number of useful websites dealing with plant anatomy. This book does not cover the subject of plant anatomy exhaustively, concentrating on seed plants, particularly angiosperms, and the emphasis of the work described naturally reflects the author's research interests in the anatomy of wood. Unlike most books on plant anatomy, however, this one succeeds in integrating structural biology with other areas of plant science and gives many amply illustrated examples of ubiquitous structures as well as of common but often neglected specialized anatomical features. This emphasizes the basic heterogeneity of plant organs at the cellular level and reinforces the view that a realistic interpretation of plant function can only be achieved through a comprehensive knowledge of the structure and organization of cells and tissues. To paraphrase Katherine Esau, the study of the development of form and organization requires the constant correlation between molecular, biochemical and structural changes in the experimental plant (Esau, 1960). There is therefore much to recommend this book, and it should be of interest both to plant biology students requiring some awareness of plant anatomy and to current molecular-based biologists attempting to determine how modifications in gene activity translate into the higher order phenotypic characteristics of plants.