Since my introduction to plant anatomy by William Strickland at the University of Richmond and my interaction with Arthur Eames and Harlan Banks at Cornell University during graduate study, I have been entranced by the elegant beauty of plant structure. At the University of Michigan I taught both paleobotany and plant anatomy for many years, and served as committee chair for graduate students, some of whom studied fossil plants and others of whom worked on the structure and development of extant taxa. During the past several decades during which the introduction of new techniques of study at the subcellular and molecular levels has resulted in a resurgence of research throughout the world, my interest in the development of plant structure has grown steadily.

Many books on plant structure, some highly technical, have appeared since the publication of the seminal textbooks of Katherine Esau during the 1950s and 1960s, but no single book that, in my opinion, incorporates both the basic knowledge of plant anatomy and contemporary information and ideas about the development of structure and form that could be used as an effective introductory textbook. Consequently, I have tried to meet the challenge of preparing such a book. In each chapter I have presented what I consider to be the fundamental knowledge essential for an understanding of basic plant structure and development and have integrated with this the results of some of the most significant recent research on plant development.